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THE   BIOGRAPHY 

OP 

A  BABY 


BY 


MILICENT  WASHBURN  SHINN 


BOSTON    AXD    NRW    YORK 
HOUGHTON    MIFFLIN   COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,    1900,    BY   MILICENT   WASHBURN   SHINN 
ALL    RIGHTS    RESERVED 


1115 

CONTENTS 


PAOB 

L  Babt  Biographies  in  General 1 

n.  The  New-born  Baby  :  Structure  and  Move- 
ments     20 

nL  The  New-born  Baby  :    Sensations  and  Con- 
sciousness   39 

rV.  The  Earliest  Developments       58 

V.  Beginnings    of   Emotion    and    Progress    in 

Sense  Powers 78 

VI.   Progress  toward  Graspinq 99 

VIL  She    learns    to    grasp,    and    discovers    the 

World  of  Things 118 

Vm.   The  Era  of  Handling  Things .141 

IX.   The  Dawn  of  Intelligence 161 

X.  Beginnings  of  Locomotion 182 

XL  Creeping  and  Standing 203 

Xn.  Rudiments  of  Speech  ;  Climbino  and  P*rogress 

toward  Walking 224 

XIIX   Walking  Alone;  Developing  Intelligence     238 


THE  BIOGRAPHY  OF  A  BABY 


BABY   BIOGRAPHIES    IN    GENERAL 

**  It  is  a  well  recognized  fact  in  the  history 
of  science  that  the  very  subjects  which  con- 
cern our  dearest  interests,  which  He  nearest 
our  hearts,  are  exactly  those  which  are  the 
last  to  submit  to  scientific  methods,  to  be 
reduced  to  scientific  law.  Thus  it  has  come 
to  pass  that  while  babies  are  born  and  grow 
up  in  every  household,  and  while  the  gradual 
unfolding  of  their  faculties  has  been  watched 
with  the  keenest  interest  and  intensest  joy 
by  intelligent  and  even  scientific  fathers  and 
mothers  from  time  immemorial,  yet  very  little 
has  yet  been  done  in  the  scientific  study  of 
this  most  important  of  all  possible  subjects, 


2  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

—  the  ontogenetic  evolution  of  the  faculties 
of  the  human  mind. 

"  Only  in  the  last  few  years  has  scientific 
attention  been  drawn  to  the  subject  at  all. 
Its  transcendent  importance  has  already  en- 
listed many  observers,  but  on  account  of  the 
great  complexity  of  the  phenomena,  and  still 
more  the  intrinsic  difficulty  of  their  inter- 
pretation, scientific  progress  has  scarcely  yet 
commenced. 

"  What  is  wanted  most  of  all  in  this,  as 
in  every  science,  is  a  body  of  carefully  oh- 
ser^ved  facts.  But  to  be  an  accomplished 
investigator  in  this  field  requires  a  rare  com- 
bination of  qualities.  There  must  be  a  wide 
intelligence  combined  with  patience  in  observ- 
ing and  honesty  in  recording.  There  must 
be  also  an  earnest  scientific  spirit,  a  loving 
sympathy  T\ath  the  subject  of  investigation, 
yet  under  watchful  restraint,  lest  it  cloud  the 
judgment ;  keenness  of  intuitive  perception, 
yet  soberness  of  judgment  in  interpretation." 

I  have  appropriated  these  words  of  Dr. 


OF    A    BABY  3 

Josepli  Le  Conte  because  the  general  reader 
is  not  likely  to  see  them  where  they  were 
originally  printed,  in  a  little  university  study, 
and  it  is  a  pity  to  let  the  general  reader 
miss  so  good  an  introduction  to  the  subject. 
Not  aU  learned  men  rate  baby  biography  as 
highly  as  Dr.  Le  Conte  does ;  but  probably 
all  biologists  do,  and  those  psychologists 
who  are  most  strongly  impressed  with  the 
evolutionary  interpretation  of  life. 

It  is  easy  to  see  why  one's  views  of  evolu- 
tion affect  the  matter.  In  botany,  for  in- 
stance, we  do  not  think  that  we  can  under- 
stand the  mature  plant  by  studying  it  alone, 
without  knowledge  of  its  germinating  period. 
If  we  omitted  all  study  of  radicle  and  plu- 
mule and  cotyledon,  we  should  not  only  lose 
an  interesting  chapter  from  the  science,  but 
even  the  part  we  kept,  the  classification  and 
morphology  and  physiology  of  the  gi-own 
plant  itself,  would  be  seriously  misunder- 
stood in  some  ways.  So  in  other  sciences :  it 
is  necessary  to  understand  how  things  came 


4  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

to  be  what  they  are,  to  study  the  process  of 
becoming,  so  to  speak,  before  the  completed 
result  can  be  understood.  This  is  what  we 
mean  by  "  the  genetic  method  "  of  studying 
a  subject. 

Now,  in  proportion  as  one  beheves  that 
the  faculties  of  the  human  mind  unfold  by 
evolutionary  law,  Hke  a  plant  from  the  germ, 
he  will  feel  the  need  of  studying  these  also 
genetically.  As  we  find  them  in  our  grown 
selves,  they  are  often  perplexing.  What 
seems  a  single  complete,  inborn  faculty  may 
really  be  made  up  of  simpler  ones,  so  fused 
together  by  long  practice  that  they  cannot 
be  discerned.  We  know  that  this  is  the  case 
with  seeing.  For  instance,  we  give  a  glance 
at  a  ball,  and  see  its  form  with  a  single  act 
of  mind.  Yet  that  act  became  possible  only 
after  long  drill  in  putting  simpler  perceptions 
together.  Many  a  test  of  form,  turning  ob- 
jects over  and  over,  passing  the  hands  round 
and  round  them,  learning  the  absence  of  cor- 
ners, the  equahty  of  diameters,  did  we  go 


OF    A    BABY  5 

through  in  babyhood,  many  an  inspection  by 
eye,  many  an  exercise  of  memory,  connecting 
the  pecuHar  arrangement  of  light  and  shade 
with  the  form  as  felt,  before  we  could  "  see  " 
a  ball.  Had  this  been  understood  in  Froe- 
bel's  time,  it  would  have  made  a  material 
difference  in  his  suggestions  as  to  sense  ti-ain- 
ing  in  earhest  infancy.  So  other  powers  that 
seem  simple  and  inborn  may  perhaps  be  de- 
tected in  the  act  of  forming  themselves  out 
of  simpler  ones,  if  we  watch  babies  closely 
enough,  and  it  may  lead  us  to  revise  some  of 
our  theories  about  education. 

There  are  enthusiasts,  indeed,  who  would 
have  us  beheve  that  child  study  is  going  to 
revolutionize  all  our  educational  methods,  but 
those  who  are  surest  of  these  wonderful  re- 
sults, and  readiest  to  tell  mothers  and  teachers 
what  is  the  truly  scientific  thing  to  do  with 
their  children,  are  not  the  ones  who  have 
done  the  most  serious  first  hand  study  of 
children.  From  indications  so  far,  it  is  hkely 
that  the  outcome  of  such  study  will  oftener 


6  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

be  to  confirm  some  good  old-fashioned  ways 
of  training  (showing  that  they  rested  uncon- 
sciously on  a  sound  psychological  basis)  than 
to  discover  new  ways.  No  substitute  has 
yet  been  found  by  scientific  pedagogy  for 
motherly  good  sense  and  devotion. 

Yet  the  direct  study  of  child  minds  does 
bring  out  some  new  suggestions  of  educa- 
tional value,  does  give  a  verdict  sometimes 
between  old  conflicting  theories,  and  always 
makes  us  understand  more  clearly  what  we 
are  doing  with  children.  And  on  the  purely 
scientific  side  there  is  one  aspect  of  especial 
interest  in  genetic  studies.  That  is,  the  pos- 
sible hght  we  may  get  on  the  past  of  the 
human  race. 

It  has  long  been  observed  that  there  are 
curious  resemblances  between  babies  and 
monkeys,  between  boys  and  barbaric  tribes. 
Schoolboys  administer  law  among  themselves 
much  as  a  tribal  court  does ;  babies  sit  hke 
monkeys,  with  the  soles  of  their  Httle  feet 
facing  each  other.     Such  resemblances  led, 


OF    A    BABY  7 

long  before  the  age  of  Darwin,  to  the  spec- 
ulation that  childi-en  in  developing  passed 
throuirh  stashes  similar  to  those  the  race  had 
passed  through ;  and  the  speculation  has  be- 
come an  accepted  docti-ine  since  embryology 
has  shown  how  each  indi\4dual  before  birth 
passes  in  successive  stages  through  the  lower 
forms  of  life. 

This  series  of  changes  in  the  individual  is 
called  by  evolutionists  the  Ontogenic  Series  ; 
and  the  similar  series  through  which  the  race 
has  passed  in  the  myriads  of  ages  of  its  evo- 
lution is  called  the  Phylogenic. 

Now,  of  these  two  versions  of  the  gi'eat 
world  history,  the  phylogenic  is  a  worn  and 
ancient  voliune,  mutilated  in  many  places, 
and  often  illegible.  The  most  interesting 
chapter  of  all  is  torn  out  —  that  which  re- 
cords the  passing  over  of  man  from  brute  to 
human,  the  beginning  of  true  human  rea- 
son, speech,  and  skill.  The  lowest  living 
races  are  far  beyond  the  transition  line ;  tlie 
remains  of  the  past  can  never  tell  ua  how  it 


8  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

was  crossed,  for  before  man  could  leave  any- 
thing more  than  bones  —  any  products  of 
his  art,  such  as  weapons,  or  signs  of  fire 
—  he  had  traveled  a  long  way  from  his  first 
human  condition. 

But  from  the  ontogenic  record  no  chapter 
can  be  torn  out :  a  fresh  copy  of  the  whole 
history,  from  alpha  to  omega,  is  written  out 
every  time  an  infant  is  conceived,  and  born, 
and  grows  to  manhood.  And  somewhere 
on  the  way  between  the  first  cell  of  the  em- 
bryo and  maturity  each  one  must  repeat  in 
his  own  life  that  wonderful  transition  into 
hmnan  intelligence.  If  we  can  thoroughly 
decipher  this  ontogenic  record,  then,  what 
may  we  not  hope  to  learn  of  the  road  by 
which  we  human  beings  came  ? 

We  must  not  forget  that  the  correspond- 
ence between  these  life  books  is  only  a  rough 
one.  They  are  versions  of  the  same  world 
story,  but  they  have  traveled  far  from  their 
common  origin,  and  have  become  widely  un- 
hke  in  details.     The  baby  has  to  take  many 


OF    A    BABY  9 

short  cuts,  and  condense  and  omit  inconceiv- 
ably, to  get  through  in  a  few  brief  years  a 
development  that  the  race  took  ages  for. 
Even  the  order  of  development  gets  dis- 
arranged sometimes.  For  instance,  priaii- 
tive  man  probably  reached  a  higher  develop- 
ment before  he  could  talk  than  babies  have 
to  now,  after  ages  of  talking  ancestry:  we 
must  not  look  to  a  child  just  learning  to  talk, 
to  get  an  idea  of  what  the  minds  of  men 
were  like  when  they  were  just  learning  to 
talk.  Again,  the  human  child  is  carrying 
on  under  the  influence  of  adidts  an  evolution 
that  primitive  man  worked  out  without  help 
or  hindrance  from  any  one  wiser  than  him- 
self;  and  that  makes  a  great  difference  in 
the  way  he  does  it. 

The  moral  of  all  this  is  that  people  should 
be  very  cautious  indeed  in  drawing  parallels 
between  the  child  and  the  race,  and  especially 
in  basing  educational  theories  on  them.  But 
if  one  is  cautious  enough  and  patient  enough, 
there  are  many  hints  about  our  race  history 


10  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

to  be  found  in  every  nursery.     Some  of  these 
I  shall  relate  in  the  following  chapters. 

Most  studies  of  children  deal  with  later 
childhood,  the  school  years ;  and  these  are 
almost  always  statistical  in  their  method, 
taking  the  individual  child  very  Httle  into 
accoimt.  My  own  study  has  been  of  baby- 
hood, and  its  method  has  been  biographical. 
It  is  hard  to  get  statistics  about  babies,  scat- 
tered as  they  are,  one  by  one,  in  different 
homes,  not  massed  in  schoolrooms.  Now 
and  then  a  doctor  has  found  material  for 
good  comparative  investigations,  and  much 
effort  has  been  spent  in  trying  to  gather  up 
measurements  of  babies'  growth  ;  but  on  the 
whole  the  most  fruitful  method  so  far  has 
been  the  biographical  one  —  that  of  watch- 
ing one  baby's  development,  day  by  day,  and 
recording  it. 

I  am  often  asked  if  the  results  one  gets  in 
this  way  are  not  misleading,  since  each  child 
might  differ  greatly  from  others.     One  must, 


OF    A    BABY  11 

of  course,  use  great  caution  in  drawing  gen- 
eral conclusions  from  a  single  child,  but  in 
many  things  all  babies  are  ahke,  and  one 
learns  to  perceive  pretty  well  which  are  the 
things.  Babyhood  is  mainly  taken  up  with 
the  development  of  the  large,  general  racial 
powers  ;  indi\ddual  differences  are  less  impor- 
tant than  in  later  childhood.  And  the  bio- 
graphical method  of  cliild  study  has  the  ines- 
timable advantage  of  showing  the  process  of 
evolution  going  on,  the  actual  unfolding  of 
one  stage  out  of  another,  and  the  steps  by 
which  the  changes  come  about.  No  amount 
of  comparative  statistics  could  give  this.  If 
I  should  find  out  that  a  thousand  babies 
learned  to  stand  at  an  average  age  of  forty- 
six  weeks  and  two  days,  I  should  not  know 
as  much  that  is  important  about  standing,  as 
a  stage  in  human  progress,  as  I  should  after 
watching  a  single  baby  carefully  through  the 
whole  process  of  achieving  bahince  on  his 
little  soles. 

Yet  there  are  not  many  baby  biographies 


12  THE    BIOGEAPIIY 

in  existence.  There  are  sccarcely  half  a  dozen 
records  that  are  full  and  consecutive  enough 
to  be  at  all  entitled  to  the  name,  and  even  of 
more  fragmentary  ones  the  number  in  print 
as  separate  essays  is  scarcely  larger.  A  good 
many  more,  however,  have  been  available  in 
manuscript  to  students,  and  many  mothers 
no  doubt  keep  such  little  notebooks.  These 
notes  are  often  highly  exact  and  intelligent, 
as  far  as  they  go  (I  have  found  this  espe- 
cially true  of  the  notebooks  of  members  of 
the  Association  of  Collegiate  Alumnae),  and 
afford  important  corroborations  here  and 
there  to  more  continuous  records. 

It  was  the  Germans  who  first  thought  baby 
life  worth  recording,  and  the  most  complete 
and  scientific  of  all  the  records  is  a  German 
one.  The  first  record  known  was  published 
in  the  last  century  by  a  Professor  Tiedemann 
—  a  mere  slip  of  an  essay,  long  completely 
forgotten,  but  resuscitated  about  the  middle 
of  this  century,  translated  into  French  (and 
lately  into  Enghsh),  and  used  by  all  students 


OF    A    BABY  13 

of  the  subject.  Some  of  its  observations  we 
must,  with  our  present  knowledge,  set  down 
as  erroneous ;  but  it  is  on  the  whole  exact 
and  valuable,  and  a  remarkable  thing  for  a 
man  to  have  done  more  than  a  hundred  years 
ago. 

Perhaps  Darwin,  in  1840,  was  the  next 
person  to  take  notes  of  an  infant's  develop- 
ment ;  but  they  were  taken  only  incidentally 
to  another  study,  and  were  not  published  for 
more  than  thirty  years  (partly  in  "  The  Ex- 
pression of  the  Emotions  in  Man  and  Ani- 
mals," 1873,  partly  in  a  magazine  article  in 
1877).  They  are  scanty  but  important.  In 
the  interval  before  they  were  published  two 
or  three  small  records  had  been  published  in 
Germany,  and  at  least  one  paper,  that  of  M. 
Taine,  in  France. 

In  1881,  the  first  edition  of  Professor 
Preyer's  "  model  record  "  was  published,  and 
before  his  death,  in  1897,  it  had  reached  its 
third  edition  in  Germany,  and  had  been 
widely  circulated  in  America  in  Mr.  Brown's 


14  THE    BIOGKAPIIY 

excellent  translation,  "  Tlie  Senses  and  the 
Will,"  and  "  The  Development  of  the  Intel- 
lect." It  did  more  to  stunulate  and  direct  the 
study  of  infancy  than  any  other  publication. 
It  has,  however,  the  limitations  that  were  to 
be  expected  from  Professor  Preyer's  special 
training  as  a  physiologist,  and  is  meagre  on 
the  side  of  mental,  moral,  and  emotional  de- 
velopment. Professor  Sully's  "  Extracts 
from  a  Father's  Diary,"  published  in  part  in 
1881  and  1884  and  fully  in  1896,  is  richer 
on  these  sides,  and  also  more  readable. 

Within  the  present  decade,  it  is  worth 
observing,  the  principal  records  have  been 
American,  not  German,  and  have  been  writ' 
ten  by  women.  Outside  of  America,  only 
men,  usually  university  professors,  have  made 
extended  records.  Professor  Preyer  and 
Professor  Sully  have  both  appealed  in  vain 
to  their  countrywomen  to  keep  such  records, 
holding  up  American  women  for  emulation. 
My  "  Notes  on  the  Development  of  a  Child  '* 
were  pubHshed  in  1893  and  1899.     In  1896 


OF    A    BABY  19 

appeared  Mrs.  Hall's  "  Tlie  First  500  Days 
of  a  Child's  Life,"  a  brief  record,  and  con- 
fined to  a  short  period,  but  a  very  good  one, 
and  perhaps  the  best  for  use  as  a  guide  by 
any  one  who  wishes  to  keej)  a  record  and 
finds  Preyer  too  technical.  Mrs.  Moore's 
"  Mental  Development  of  a  Child  "  is  quite 
as  much  a  psychological  study  as  a  record, 
but  is  based  on  full  biographical  notes;  it 
will  be  more  used  by  students  than  general 
readers.  Mrs.  Hogan's  "A  Study  of  a 
Child,"  1898,  is  less  scholarly  than  the 
others,  but  has  a  great  deal  of  useful  mate- 
rial ;  it  does  not  begin  at  birth,  however,  but 
with  the  fourteenth  month. 

Perhaps  I  should  say  a  word  here  as  to  the 
way  in  which  I  came  to  make  a  baby  bio- 
graphy, for  I  am  often  asked  how  one  should 
go  to  work  at  it.  It  was  not  done  in  my 
case  for  any  scientific  purpose,  for  I  did  not 
feel  competent  to  make  observations  of  scien- 
tific value.  But  I  had  for  years  desired  an 
opportunity  to  see  the  wonderful  unfoldhig 


16  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

of  human  powers  out  of  the  limp  helpless- 
ness of  the  new-born  baby ;  to  watch  this 
fascinating  drama  of  evolution  daily,  mi- 
nutely, and  with  an  effort  to  understand  it 
as  far  as  I  could,  for  my  own  pleasure  and 
information.  I  scarcely  know  whence  the 
suggestion  had  come;  probably  almost  by 
inheritance,  for  my  mother  and  grandmother 
had  both  been  in  somewhat  notable  degree 
observers  of  the  development  of  babies' 
minds.  But,  unlike  them,  I  had  the  note- 
book habit  from  college  and  editorial  days, 
and  jotted  things  down  as  I  watched,  till 
quite  unexpectedly  I  found  myself  in  posse* 
sion  of  a  large  mass  of  data. 

A  few  days  after  my  own  notes  began  I 
obtained  Professor  Preyer's  record,  and  with- 
out it  I  should  have  found  the  earliest  weeks 
quite  unintelligible.  For  some  months  my 
notes  were  largely  memoranda  of  the  Hke- 
nesses  and  differences  between  my  niece's 
development  and  that  of  Preyer's  boy,  and 
I  still  think  this  is  the  best  way  for  a  new 


OF    A    BABY  17 

observer  to  get  started.  As  time  went  on,  I 
departed  more  and  more  from  the  lines  of 
Preyer's  observations,  and  after  the  first  year 
was  httle  influenced  by  them.  Later,  I  de- 
voted a  good  deal  of  study  to  the  notes,  and 
tried  to  analyze  their  scientific  results. 

There  is  one  question  that  I  have  been 
asked  a  hundi-ed  times  about  baby  biogra- 
phy :  "  Does  n't  it  do  the  childi-en  some 
harm?  Doesn't  it  make  them  nervous? 
Does  n't  it  make  them  self-conscious  ?  "  At 
first  this  seemed  to  me  an  odd  misapprehen- 
sion —  as  if  people  supposed  observing  chil- 
dren meant  doing  something  to  them.  But 
I  have  no  doubt  it  could  be  so  foolishly 
managed  as  to  harm  the  child.  There  are 
thousands  of  parents  who  tell  anecdotes 
about  children  before  their  faces  every  day 
in  the  year,  and  if  such  a  parent  turns  child 
student  it  is  hard  to  say  what  he  may  not  do 
in  the  way  of  dissecting  a  child's  mind  openly, 
questioning  the  little  one  about  himself,  and 
experunenting  with  his  thoughts  and  feelings. 


18  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

But  such  observing  is  as  worthless  scientifi- 
cally as  it  is  bad  for  the  child :  the  whole 
value  of  an  observation  is  gone  as  soon  as 
the  phenomena  observed  lose  simphcity  and 
spontaneity.  It  should  be  unnecessary  to 
say  that  no  competent  observer  tampers  with 
the  cliild  in  any  way.  If  Professor  Preyer, 
observing  the  baby  as  he  fu*st  grasps  at 
objects,  notes  down  the  way  in  which  he 
misdii'ects  his  inexpert  httle  hands  ;  if  Mrs. 
Barus  keeps  record  of  her  boy's  favorite 
playthings  ;  if  I  sit  by  the  window  and  catch 
with  my  pencU  my  niece's  prattle  as  she  plays 
about  below  —  and  if  these  babies  afterward 
turn  out  spoiled,  the  mischief  must  be  cred- 
ited to  some  other  agency  than  the  silent 
notebook. 

Even  direct  experimenting  on  a  child  is 
not  so  bad  as  it  sounds.  When  you  show  a 
baby  his  father's  photograph  to  see  if  he 
recognizes  it,  you  are  experimenting  on  him. 
The  only  difference  between  the  child  stu- 
dent's experimentuig  and  that  which  all  the 


OF    A    BABY  19 

members  of  the  family  are  doing  all  day  with 
the  baby,  is  that  the  student  knows  better 
what  he  is  trying  to  find  out,  and  that  he 
writes  it  down. 

Probably  women  are  more  skillful  than 
men  in  quietly  following  the  course  of  the 
child's  mind,  even  leading  huu  to  reveal  him- 
self without  at  all  meddling  with  him  or 
marring  his  simphcity.  It  has  been  so  in 
a  marked  degree  in  the  cases  I  have  seen. 
But  no  one  who  has  good  judg-ment  wdll 
allow  himself  to  spoil  both  the  child  and  his 
own  observation ;  and  any  one  who  has  not 
good  judgment  will  find  plenty  of  ways  to 
spoil  a  child  more  potent  than  observing 
him. 


20  THE   BIOGRAPHY 


n 


THE    NEW-BORN    BABY:     STRUCTURE    AND 
MOVEMENTS. 

"Its  first  act  is  a  cry,  not  of  wrath,  as 
Kant  said,  nor  a  shout  of  joy,  as  Schwartz 
thought,  but  a  snuffling,  and  then  long,  thm, 
tearless  a — a,  with  the  timbre  of  a  Scotch 
bagpipe,  purely  automatic,  but  of  discomfort. 
With  this  monotonous  and  dismal  cry,  with 
its  red,  shriveled,  parboiled  skin  (for  the 
child  commonly  loses  weight  the  fii'st  few 
days),  squinting,  cross-eyed,  pot-beUied,  and 
bow-legged,  it  is  not  strange  that,  if  the 
mother  has  not  followed  Froebel's  exhorta- 
tions and  come  to  love  her  child  before  birth, 
there  is  a  brief  interval  occasionally  danger- 
ous to  the  child  before  the  maternal  instinct 
is  fully  aroused." 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  this  unflattering 


OF    A    BABY  21 

description  is  fair  enough,  and  our  baby  was 
no  handsomer  than  the  rest  of  her  kind. 
The  httle  boy  uncle,  who  had  been  elated  to 
hear  that  his  niece  resembled  him,  looked 
shocked  and  mortified  when  he  saw  her. 
Yet  she  did  not  lack  admirers.  I  have  never 
noticed  that  women  (even  those  who  are  not 
mothers)  mind  a  few  httle  aesthetic  defects, 
such  as  these  that  President  Hall  mentions, 
with  so  many  counterbalancing  charms  in 
the  httle  warm,  soft,  hving  tiling. 

Nor  is  it  women  only  who  find  the  new 
baby  enchanting  —  in  Germany,  at  least. 
Semmig,  whose  "  Tagebuch  eines  Vaters" 
is  one  of  the  earliest  attempts  at  a  record,  is 
dehghted  even  with  the  "  dismal  and  mono- 
tonous cry."  "  Heavenly  music  of  the  first 
cry  !  "  he  exclaims,  "  sacred  voice  of  life, 
first  sound  of  the  poem  of  a  heart,  first  note 
of  the  symphony  of  human  life,  thou  echo 
of  God's  word!  What  sound  is  like  unto 
thee  ?  "  "  Yes,  it  is  so  :  the  cry  of  the  bal)y 
is  music  !     When  it  is  still,  especially  in  the 


22  THE    BIOGRAniY 

night,  one  is  uneasy ;  one  longs  for  this 
primitive  expression  of  the  little  being,  and 
is  consoled,  enraptui'ed,  when  the  helpless 
creatiu'e  breaks  into  loud  wails,  and  says  to 
us :  I  hve,  give  me  what  I  need  !  Oh,  cry 
of  the  baby  in  the  night,  nightingale  song 
for  mother  and  father  !  " 

Our  baby  was  at  least  a  handsome  one 
from  the  doctor's  point  of  view,  strong, 
healthy,  and  well  formed ;  and  this  is  to  be 
taken  into  account  as  a  determining  factor 
in  all  the  record  that  follows. 

I  thought  that  she  must  be  out  of  the  nor- 
mal in  the  matter  of  legs,  so  oddly  brief  were 
the  fat  httle  members.  Afterward  I  learned 
that  all  babies  are  built  that  way  —  and 
indeed  that  they  are  altogether  so  different 
in  structure  from  the  grown  man  that  Dr. 
Oppenlieim,  in  his  book  on  "  The  Develop- 
ment of  the  Child,"  comes  near  to  saying 
that  we  must  regard  the  infant  as  a  different 
animal  form  from  the  adult,  almost  as  the 
cateipillar   is  different   from   the   butterfly. 


OF    A    BABY  23 

Common  speech  recognizes  this  in  the  case 
of  several  of  the  hi«-her  animals,  naniinof  the 
young  form  as  differently  as  if  it  were  a 
different  species.  We  say  a  colt,  a  calf,  a 
puppy,  a  baby ;  not  a  young  horse,  cow, 
dog,  or  man. 

We  call  a  baby  a  httle  copy  of  the  man, 
but  really  if  he  were  magnified  to  man's  size 
and  strength,  we  should  regard  him  at  first 
glance  as  an  idiot  and  monster,  with  enor- 
mous head  and  abdomen,  short  legs,  and  no 
neck,  not  to  speak  of  the  flat-nosed,  progna- 
thous face ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  a  baby 
that  was  really  a  small  copy  of  man's  body 
would  seem  positively  uncanny.  We  see  this 
in  old  pictures,  where  the  artist  tried  to  de- 
pict babies  by  placing  smaU-sized  men  and 
women  in  the  mother's  arms. 

The  middle  point  of  the  baby's  length 
falls  a  little  above  the  navel,  the  abdomen 
and  legs  together  maldng  up  a  little  more 
than  half  the  whole  lengtli ;  in  the  man  the 
legs  alone  make  a  tiifle  more  than  half.     In 


24  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

proportion  to  the  baby's  total  weight,  its 
brain  weighs  seven  times  as  much  as  a  grown 
person's,  its  muscles  httle  more  than  half  as 
much. 

"  The  two  [man  and  baby]  do  not  breathe 
ahke,  their  pulse  rates  are  not  ahke,  the  com- 
position of  their  bodies  is  not  ahke."  The 
baby's  body  at  birth  is  74.7  per  cent,  water, 
ours  58.5  per  cent.  It  is  largely  due  to  its 
loose,  watery  structure  that  the  baby's  brain 
is  so  heavy  —  which  shows  the  folly  of  try^ 
ing  to  compare  mental  powers  by  means  of 
brain  weights,  as  is  so  often  done  in  discuss- 
ing woman's  sphere.  As  Donaldson  says, 
if  there  were  anything  in  that  basis  of  com- 
parison, the  new-born  baby  would  be  the 
intellectual  master  of  us  aU.  The  baby  has 
bright  red  and  watery  marrow,  instead  of 
the  yellow,  fatty  substance  in  our  bones ; 
and  its  blood  differs  so  from  ours  in  propor- 
tion of  red  and  white  corpuscles  and  in 
chemical  make-up  as  to  "amount  almost  to 
a  difference  in  kind,"  says  Dr.  Oppenheim, 


OF    A    BABY  25 

■who  adds  that  such  a  condition  of  marrow 
or  blood,  if  found  in  a  grown  person,  would 
be  considered  an  indication  of  disease. 

The  organs  are  differently  placed  within 
the  body,  and  even  differently  formed.  The 
bony  structure  is  everywhere  soft  and  unfin- 
ished, the  plates  of  the  skull  imperfectly  fitted 
together,  w4th  gaps  at  the  corners ;  and  it  is 
well  that  they  are,  for  if  the  brain  box  were 
closed  tig-ht  the  brain  within  could  never 
grow.  Surgeons  have  lately  even  made  arti- 
ficial openings  where  the  skull  was  prema- 
turely perfect,  to  save  the  baby  from  idiocy. 
The  bony  inclosures  of  the  middle  ear  are 
quite  unfinished,  so  that  on  the  one  side 
catarrhal  inflammations  from  the  nose  and 
throat  travel  up  to  the  ear  more  readily  than 
in  later  life,  while  on  the  other  side  ear  in- 
flammations are  more  likely  to  pass  into  the 
brain.  The  spine  is  straight,  like  an  ape's, 
instead  of  havingf  the  double  curve  of  human- 
kind,  which  seems  to  be  brought  about  by 
the  pull  of  the  muscles  after  we  have  come 
to  stand  erect. 


26  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

I  have  quoted  these  details  from  Oppen- 
heim,  and  from  Vierordt's  and  Roberts's  mea- 
surements, as  given  by  Dr.  Bui'k  ("  Growth 
of  Children  in  Height  and  Weight.")  Some 
of  the  figures  are  given  otherwise  by  other 
authorities.  I  might  fill  many  pages  with 
similar  details.  Some  of  these  differences 
do  not  disappear  till  fidl  manhood,  others 
are  gone  in  a  few  weeks  after  birth.  And 
in  them  all  there  is  so  constant  a  repetition 
of  lower  animal  forms  that  anatomists  are 
brought  to  a  confidence  in  the  "  recapitula- 
tion doctrine,"  such  as  they  can  hardly  give 
to  others  by  means  of  a  few  sample  facts. 

The  most  curious  of  all  the  monkey  traits 
shown  by  the  new-born  baby  is  the  one  inves- 
tigated by  Dr.  Louis  Robinson  ("  Nineteenth 
Century,"  November,  1891).  It  was  sug- 
gested by  "  The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp." 
The  question  was  raised  in  conversation 
whether  a  Hmp  and  molluscous  baby,  unable 
so  much  as  to  hold  up  its  head  on  its  helpless 
little  neck,  could  do  anything  so  positive  as 


OF    A    BABY  27 

to  "  rastle  ^ath  "  Kentuck's  finger  ;  and  the 
more  knowing  j^ersons  present  insisted  that  a 
young  baby  does,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  have 
a  good  fii-m  hand-clasp.  It  occurred  to  Dr. 
Robinson  that  if  this  was  true  it  was  a  beau- 
tiful Darwinian  point,  for  cHnging  and  swing- 
ing by  the  arms  would  naturally  have  been  a 
specialty  with  our  ancestors  if  they  ever  Hved 
a  monkey-hke  life  in  the  trees.  The  baby 
that  could  cling  best  to  its  mother  as  she 
used  hands,  feet,  and  tail  to  flee  in  the  best 
time  over  the  ti-ees,  or  to  get  at  the  more 
inaccessible  fruits  and  eggs  in  time  of  scar- 
city, would  be  the  baby  that  Hved  to  bequeath 
his  traits  to  his  descendants ;  so  that  to  this 
day  our  housed  and  cradled  human  babies 
woidd  keep  in  their  clinging  powers  a  remi- 
niscence of  our  wild  treetop  days. 

Dr.  Robinson  was  fortunate  enough  to  be 
able  to  test  his  theory  on  some  sixty  babies 
in  the  first  hours  of  their  life,  and  was  tri- 
umphantly successful.  He  clasped  their 
hands  aljout  a  slender  rod,  and  they  swung 


28  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

from  it  like  athletes,  without  apparent  (lis- 
comfort,  by  the  half  minute;  many  of  us 
grown  people  could  not  do  as  well.  Such  a 
remarkable  power  of  hands  and  arms  has  for 
ages  been  of  no  especial  use  to  the  human 
race,  and  it  fades  out  in  a  few  weeks,  but  for 
many  months  the  arms  keep  ahead  of  the 
legs  in  development. 

Here  was  not  only  strength  of  arms,  but 
the  ability  to  perform  quite  skillfully  an  ac- 
tion, that  required  the  working  together  of  a 
number  of  muscles  to  a  definite  end,  —  the 
action  namely,  of  clasping  an  object  with 
the  hand.  This  is  one  of  several  actions 
that  come  ready-made  to  the  baby  at  birth, 
before  he  can  possibly  have  had  any  chance 
to  learn  them,  or  any  idea  of  what  they  are 
for.  Babies  sneeze,  swallow,  and  cry  on  the 
first  day  j  they  shut  their  eyes  at  a  bright 
light,  or  at  a  touch.  On  the  first  day, 
moreover,  they  have  been  seen  to  start  at  a 
sound  or  a  jar ;  Preyer  observed  hiccough- 
ing, choking,  coughing,  and  spreading  the 


OF    A    BABY  29 

toe«  when  the  soles  were  tickled ;  and  Dar- 
win saw  yawning  and  stretching  within  the 
first  week,  though  I  do  not  know  that  any 
one  has  seen  it  on  the  first  day. 

These  movements  are  all  of  the  class  called 
reflex,  —  movements,  that  is,  in  which  the 
bodily  mechanism  is  set  off  by  some  outside 
action  on  the  senses,  as  a  gun  is  set  off  by 
a  touch  on  the  trigger.  Thus,  when  a  tick- 
ling affects  the  mucous  membrane,  a  sneeze 
executes  itself  without  any  will  of  ours;  when 
our  sense  of  sight  perceives  a  swift  missile 
coming,  the  neck  muscles  mechanically  jerk 
the  head  to  one  side. 

We  grown  people  have,  however,  a  good 
deal  of  power  of  holding  in  our  reflexes,  — 
"  inhibiting "  them,  as  the  technical  ex- 
pression is,  —  but  the  baby  has  none  at  all. 
If  they  had  a  highly  developed  reflex  activ- 
ity, babies  would  be  in  real  danger  from  the 
unrestrained  acts  of  their  own  muscles,  as 
we  see  in  the  case  of  convulsions,  which 
show  reflex  action  at  its  extreme.     But  the 


30  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

actions  I  have  mentioned  are  about  all  the 
reflex  movements  that  have  been  noted  in 
new-born  babies,  except  what  are  called  the 
periodic  reflexes,  such  as  breathing,  the  heart- 
beat, the  contractions  of  the  arteries,  and  all 
the  regular  muscular  actions  of  organic  life. 

That  so  complex  a  system  of  movement  as 
these  periodic  reflexes  should  be  so  readily 
touched  into  motion  upon  contact  with  air 
and  food,  to  maintain  itself  afterward  by 
the  interplay  of  the  bodily  mechanism  and 
external  forces,  shows  a  ready-made  heredi- 
tary activity  far  more  than  the  sudden  re- 
flexes do.  It  does  not  work  quite  smoothly 
at  first,  however :  the  establishment  of  breath- 
ing, for  instance,  is  irregular,  and  often  dif- 
ficult. Even  the  sudden  reflexes  are  slower 
and  less  perfect  than  with  older  peojjle. 

There  is  another  class  of  movements,  often 
confused  with  the  reflex  —  that  is,  instinctive 
movements.  Real  grasping  (as  distinguished 
from  reflex  grasping),  biting,  standing,  walk- 
ing, are  examples  of  this  class.     They  are 


OF    A    BABY  31 

race  movements,  the  habits  of  the  species  to 
which  the  animal  belongs,  and  every  normal 
member  of  the  species  is  bound  to  come  to 
them ;  yet  they  are  not  so  fixed  in  the  bodily 
mechanism  as  the  reflex  movements.  The 
stimulus  to  them  seems  to  come  more  from 
within  than  from  without  —  yet  not  from 
reason  and  will,  but  from  some  blind  im- 
pulse. This  impulse  is  usually  imperfect, 
and  the  child  has  to  work  his  own  way  to 
the  mastery  of  the  movements.  Yet  though 
certain  reflex  activities  are  inherited  in  a 
more  highly  developed  condition  than  any 
human  instincts,  the  instincts  are  at  bottom 
always  hereditary,  which  is  not  the  case  with 
the  reflexes  —  any  one  may  teach  his  muscles 
new  reflex  movements,  unknown  to  his  an- 
cestors. A  musician  does  it  every  time  that 
he  practices  new  music  tifl  liis  hands  will  run 
it  off  of  their  own  accord,  while  he  is  think- 
ing of  something  else.  But  instinct  cannot 
be  thus  acquired. 

The  amazing  instincts  of  the  lower  ani* 


32  THE    BIOGEAPHY 

mals  ;  the  imperfect  and  broken  condition  of 
the  instincts  in  man,  yet  the  deep  hold  that 
they  have  on  him  ;  the  minghng  of  inherited 
necessity  and  individual  freedom  in  the  way 
in  which  they  are  worked  out ;  the  mystery 
of  the  physiological  method  by  which  they 
act  (while  that  of  reflex  movement  is  fairly 
•well  understood,  up  to  a  certain  point) ;  the 
light  they  seem  always  about  to  shed  for  the 
biologist  on  the  profoundest  problems  of 
heredity,  and  for  the  philosopher  on  those 
of  free  will  and  personality,  —  these  things 
make  instinct  one  of  the  great  fields  of  pre- 
sent research,  and  I  must  not  venture  into 
it,  though  it  is  of  importance  in  trying  to 
understand  a  baby. 

I  shall  say  only  that  while  instinct  does 
not  appear  in  the  lowest  animals  (whose 
action  is  all  of  the  reflex  type),  and  is  for  a 
time  a  sign  of  rising  rank  in  the  scale  of  life, 
it  reaches  its  culmination  with  the  insects, 
and  as  we  approach  man  it  is  the  breaking 
up  of  the  instincts  that  is  in  its  turn  a  sign 


OF    A    BABY  33 

of  advancement  to  higher  life.  The  httle 
chicken  runs  about  as  soon  as  it  is  out  of  its 
shell,  and  even  the  monkey  baby  is  able  to 
take  care  of  itself  in  a  few  months.  Nothing 
is  so  helpless  as  the  human  baby,  and  in  that 
helplessness  is  our  glory,  for  it  means  that 
the  activities  of  the  race  (as  John  Fiske  has 
80  clearly  shown)  have  become  too  many, 
too  complex,  too  infrequently  repeated,  to 
become  fixed  in  the  nervous  structure  before 
birth  ;  hence  the  long  period  after  birth  be- 
fore the  child  comes  to  full  human  powers. 
It  is  a  maxim  of  biology  (as  well  as  the  fre- 
quent lesson  of  common  observation)  that 
while  an  organism  is  thus  immature  and 
plastic,  it  may  learn,  it  may  change,  it  may 
rise  to  higher  development ;  and  thus  to  in- 
fancy we  owe  the  rank  of  the  human  race. 

The  one  instinct  the  human  baby  always 
brings  into  the  world  already  developed  is 
half  a  mere  reflex  act  —  that  of  sucking.  It 
is  started  as  a  reflex  would  be,  by  the  touch 
of  some  object,  pencil,  finger,  or  nipple,  it 


34  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

may  be,  between  the  lips ;  but  it  does  not  act 
like  a  reflex  after  that.  It  continues  and 
ceases  without  reference  to  this  external  stim- 
ulus, and  a  little  later  often  begins  without  it, 
or  fails  to  begin  when  the  stimulus  is  given. 
If  it  has  originally  a  reflex  character,  that 
character  fades  out,  and  leaves  it  a  pure  in- 
stinct. 

These  two  types  of  automatic  movement 
(for  instinct,  however  complicated  later  with 
volition,  gives  rise  in  these  earliest  days  to 
none  but  automatic  movement)  are  both 
'*  purposive,"  though  not  purposed  —  that 
is,  they  are  actions  that  are  plainly  adapted 
to  some  end  by  ancestral  intelligence  or  by 
natural  selection.  But  there  was  another 
type  of  movements  more  conspicuous  in  our 
baby  than  either,  and  apparently  quite  non- 
purposive.  From  the  first  day  she  moved 
slightly,  but  almost  constantly,  the  legs 
drawing  up,  the  arms  stirring,  the  eyes  and 
head  rolling  a  little.  Sometimes  the  features 
were  distorted  with  vague  and  meaningless 


OF    A    BABY  35 

grimaces.  Most  other  observers  report  these 
movements,  and  inexperienced  ones  say  that 
the  baby  "  felt  ■with  his  hands  about  his 
face,"  or  "  tried  to  gret  his  hands  to  his  head." 
Any  mother  may  convince  herself  that  the 
baby  has  no  will  in  the  matter  by  watching 
till  he  really  does  begin  to  try,  weeks  later, 
to  turn  his  head,  put  his  hands  to  his  mouth, 
kick  up  his  legs  :  the  difference  in  the  whole 
manner  of  the  action  is  evident. 

An  odd  explanation  has  been  offered  for 
these  movements  by  Dr.  Mumford,  an  Eng- 
lish physiologist.  He  holds  that  they  have 
a  singular  resemblance  to  those  of  swimming 
amphibians ;  that  their  prototype  may  be 
seen  in  any  aquarium ;  they  are,  in  short, 
survivals  of  the  period  long  before  the  ape- 
like stage,  long  before  any  mammalian  stage, 
when  our  ancestors  had  not  yet  abandoned 
life  in  the  waters. 

Now,  although  it  is  quite  true  that  biolo- 
gists believe  that  if  our  ancestry  is  traced  far 
enough,  it  does  lead  back  to  the  water,  still 


S6  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

it  seems  hardly  possible  that  in  a  human 
baby,  whose  structure  passed  the  amphibian 
stage  long  before  birth,  the  most  frequent 
movements  should  hark  back  to  that  tre- 
mendous antiquity.  It  is  more  likely  that 
Preyer's  explanation  is  the  correct  one : 
viz.,  that  the  movements  are  simply  due  to 
the  rapid  growth  of  nerve  centres,  which 
causes  an  overflow  of  nervous  force  to  the 
muscles  and  makes  them  contract  at  haphaz- 
ard. A  certain  regularity  is  given  to  these 
chance  movements  by  the  tendency  of  nerve 
impulse  to  flow  in  the  same  paths  where  it 
has  flowed  before,  rather  than  in  new  ones, 
so  that  the  muscles  are  drawn  toward  the 
position  they  occupied  before  birth.  This 
brings  the  hands  constantly  up  about  the 
head  —  a  fact  that  later  has  important  resultb 
in  development. 

These  aimless  movements  are  called  "  im- 
pulsive "  by  Preyer.  I  have  followed  Bain 
and  Mrs.  Moore  in  calling  them  "  spontanea 
ous." 


OF    A    CABY  37 

There  were  no  movements  beyond  these 
three  types,  and  therefore  none  that  showed 
the  least  volition.  Mothers  often  think  the 
crying  shows  wish,  will,  or  understanding  of 
some  sort.  But  Preyer  tells  us  that  babies 
born  without  a  brain  cry  in  just  the  same 
manner. 

Mothers  do  not  Uke  to  think  that  the 
baby  is  at  first  an  automaton  ;  and  they 
would  be  quite  right  in  objecting  if  that 
meant  that  he  was  a  mere  machine.  He  is 
an  automaton  in  the  sense  that  he  has  prac- 
tically neither  thought,  wish,  nor  will ;  but 
he  is  a  living,  conscious  automaton,  and  that 
makes  all  the  difference  in  the  world.  And 
it  would  be  a  bold  psychologist  who  should 
try  to  say  what  germ  of  thought  and  will 
lies  enfolded  in  his  helplessness.  Certainly, 
the  capacity  of  developing  will  is  there,  and 
an  automaton  with  such  a  capacity  is  a  more 
wonderful  creature  than  the  wise,  thinking, 
willing  baby  of  nursery  tradition  would  be. 

If  mothers  would  only  reflect  how  little 


38  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

developed  a  baby's  mind  is  at  a  year  old, 
after  all  the  progress  of  twelve  months,  they 
would  see  that  they  rate  the  mental  starting 
point  altogether  too  high.  And  they  miss 
thus  the  whole  drama  of  the  swift  and  lovely 
unfolding  of  the  soul  from  its  invisible  germ 
—  a  drama  that  sometimes  fairly  catches 
one's  breath  in  the  throat  with  excitement 
and  wonder. 


OF    A    BABY  39 


III 

THE   NEW-BORN    BABY  :    SENSATIONS    AND 
CONSCIOUSNESS. 

I  HAVE  said  that  the  baby  began  the  world 
as  an  automaton,  but  a  conscious,  feehng 
automaton.  And  what,  then,  were  these 
feelings  and  this  consciousness?  What  was 
the  outfit  for  beginning  the  world  that  the 
little  mind  brought  with  it  ?  When  I  asked 
such  questions  I  was  skirting  the  edge  of  one 
of  the  great  battle-grounds  of  philosophy. 
Whether  all  human  ideas  are  made  up  solely 
from  one's  own  experience  of  the  outer  world 
as  given  him  by  his  senses,  or  whether  there 
are,  on  the  contrary,  inborn  ideas,  implanted 
directly  by  nature  or  God,  —  this  is  a  ques- 
tion on  which  volumes  have  been  written. 

Did    the  baby  start  out    ready  equipped 
with  ideas  of  space,  personal  identity,  time, 


40  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

causation,  such  as  we  find  so  ineradicable  in 
our  own  minds?  That  is,  did  she  see  ob- 
jects about  her,  located  in  space,  nearer  and 
farther,  right  and  left,  and  all  outside  and 
separate  from  herself,  as  we  do  ?  hear  sounds 
coming-  from  without,  as  we  do?  Did  she 
feel  herself  a  separate  thing  from  the  outer 
world?  Did  she  perceive  events  as  happen- 
ing in  time  succession,  one  after  another  ? 
And  did  she  think  of  one  thing  as  happen- 
ing because  of  another,  so  that,  for  instance, 
she  was  capable  of  crying  in  order  to  cause 
her  dinner  to  be  brought? 

The  hope  of  answering  such  questions  was 
the  first  stimulus  to  the  study  of  infants,  and 
the  earlier  records  are  much  occupied  with 
them.  Philosophers  nowadays  are  less  dis- 
posed to  think  that  we  can  prove  anything 
about  the  doctrine  of  innate  ideas  by  find- 
ing whether  babies  have  such  ideas  to  begin 
with ;  for  we  might  indeed  have  ideas  that 
came  direct  from  God,  or  from  the  nature  of 
the  mind,  and  yet  might  not  enter  into  our 
inheritance  of  these  at  once. 


OF    A    BABY  41 

To  me,  however,  not  seeking  to  solve 
philosophical  problems,  but  only  to  watch 
and  comprehend  what  was  going  on  in  the 
baby's  mind,  it  was  none  the  less  interest- 
ing to  try  to  make  out  the  condition  of  her 
senses  and  consciousness  —  though  without 
the  careful  special  investigations  certain 
physiologists  had  made  before,  I  should  have 
found  it  blind  guessing  as  to  how  much  she 
really  did  see,  hear,  and  feel ;  for  these  pro- 
cesses, of  course,  went  on  inside  her  little 
mind,  and  could  only  be  inferred  from  her 
behavior. 

She  evidently  felt  a  difference  between 
light  and  darkness  from  the  first  hour,  for 
she  stopped  crying  when  her  face  was  ex- 
posed to  gentle  light ;  and  other  observers 
confirm  this.  Two  or  three  report  also  a 
turning  of  the  head  toward  the  liglit  within 
the  first  week.  Tlie  nurse,  who  was  intelli- 
gent and  exact,  thought  she  saw  this  in  the 
case  of  my  niece.  I  did  not,  but  I  saw  in- 
stead a  constant  turning  of  the  eyes  toward 


42  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

a  person  coming  near  her  —  that  is,  toward 
a  large  dark  mass  that  interrupted  the  hght. 
Either  movement  must  be  regarded  as  en- 
tirely instinctive  or  reflex.  Even  plants  will 
turn  toward  the  light,  and  among  animal 
movements  this  is  one  of  the  most  primitive  ; 
while  the  habit  of  looking  toward  any  dark 
moving  mass  runs  far  back  in  animal  history, 
and  may  well  have  become  fixed  in  the  bodily 
mechanism.  With  the  beginning  of  volun- 
tary looking  these  instinctive  movements 
fade. 

No  other  sign  of  vision  appeared  in  the 
little  one  during  the  first  fortnight.  The 
eyes  were  directed  to  nothing,  fixed  on  no- 
thing. They  did  not  wink  if  one  made  a 
pass  at  them.  There  was  no  change  of  focus 
for  near  or  distant  seeing ;  the  two  eyes  did 
not  even  move  always  in  unison,  —  and  as 
the  fids  also  had  by  no  means  learned  yet  to 
move  symmetrically  with  the  balls  and  with 
each  other,  some  extraordinary  and  alarming 
contortions  resulted. 


OF    A    BABY  43 

True  seeing,  such  as  we  ourselves  have, 
is  not  just  a  matter  of  opening  the  eyes  and 
letting  the  vision  pour  in  ;  it  requires  a  great 
deal  of  minute  muscular  adjustment,  both  of 
the  eyeballs  a:id  of  the  lenses,  and  it  is  im- 
possible that  a  baby  should  see  anything  but 
blurs  of  light  and  dark  (without  even  any 
distinction  of  distance)  till  he  has  learned  the 
adjustments.  Not  colored  blurs,  but  Hght 
and  dark  only,  for  no  trace  of  color  sense 
has  ever  been  detected  within  the  first  fort- 
night of  life,  no  certain  evidence  of  it  even 
within  the  first  year. 

The  baby  showed  no  sign  of  hearing  any- 
thing until  the  third  day,  when  she  started 
violently  at  the  sound  of  tearing  paper,  some 
eijiht  feet  from  her.  After  that,  occasional 
harsh  or  sudden  sounds  —  oftener  the  rus- 
tling of  paper  than  anything  else  —  could 
make  her  start  or  cry. 

It  is  well  established  by  the  careful  tests 
of  several  physiologists  that  babies  are  deaf 
for  a  period  lasting  from  several  hours  to 


44  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

several  days  after  birth.  The  outer  tube  of 
the  ear  is  often  closed  by  its  own  walls,  and 
the  middle  ear  is  always  stopped  up  with 
fluid.  Even  after  the  ear  itself  is  clear  and 
ready  for  hearing,  few  sounds  are  noticed ; 
perhaps  because  the  outer  passage  is  still  so 
narrow,  perhaps  because  of  imperfect  nerve 
connections  with  the  brain,  perhaps  because 
sounds  are  not  distinguished,  but  go  aU  to- 
gether into  a  sort  of  blur,  just  as  the  sights 
do.  As  the  usual  effect  of  sounds  on  wee 
babies  is  to  startle  them,  and  to  set  off  con- 
vulsive reflex  movements,  it  is  well  for  them 
that  hearing  is  so  tardy  in  development. 

There  is  noticeable  variation  in  sensitive- 
ness to  hearing,  not  only  among  different 
babies,  but  in  the  same  baby  at  different 
times.  A  sound  that  startles  on  one  day 
seems  to  pass  absolutely  unheard  on  the  next. 

In  observing  the  sensibihty  to  sound,  one 
may  easily  be  misled.  If  a  baby  starts  when 
a  door  slams  or  a  heavy  object  falls,  it  is 
more  likely  to  be  the  jar. than  the  sound  that 


OF    A    BABY  45 

affects  him  ;  if  he  becomes  restless  when  one 
claps  the  hands  or  speaks,  it  may  be  because 
he  felt  a  puff  of  air  on  his  head.  The  tap 
of  an  ordinary  call  bell  is  a  good  sound  to 
test  with,  causing  neither  jar  nor  air  current. 
Taste  and  smell  were  senses  that  the  baby 
gave  no  sign  of  owning  till  much  later.  The 
satisfaction  of  hunger  was  quite  enough  to 
account  for  the  contentment  she  showed  in 
nursing ;  and  when  she  was  not  hungry  she 
would  suck  the  most  tasteless  object  as  cheer- 
fully as  any  other.  Physiologists,  however, 
have  had  the  daring  to  make  careful  test  of 
smell  and  taste  in  the  new-born,  putting  a 
wee  drop  of  quinine,  sugar,  salt,  or  acid  solu- 
tion on  the  babies'  tongues,  and  strong  odors 
to  their  noses,  and  have  been  made  certain 
by  the  resulting  behavior  that  these  senses 
do  exist  from  the  first.  But  it  requires  rather 
strong  tests  to  call  them  into  action.  Many 
babies,  for  instance,  suck  at  a  two  per  cent, 
solution  of  quinine  as  if  it  were  sugar ;  so  it 
seems  unhkely  tliat  the  mild  and  monotonous 


46  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

taste  of  milk,  and  tlie  neutral  smells  by  which 
any  well-kept  baby  is  surrounded,  are  really 
perceived  at  all.  There  are  instances  related 
of  very  positive  discrimination  between  one 
milk  and  another,  either  by  taste  or  smell, 
shown  by  very  young  babies ;  yet  the  weight 
of  evidence  points  to  an  almost  dormant 
condition  of  these  two  senses. 

We  were  told  in  school  that  the  fifth  sense 
was  "  feeling,"  but  psychologists  now  regard 
this  not  as  a  single  sense,  but  as  a  group, 
called  the  "  dermal "  or  skin  senses.  The 
sense  of  touch  and  pressure,  the  senses  of 
heat  and  cold,  and  the  sense  of  pain  are  the 
principal  ones  of  the  group. 

Our  baby  showed  from  the  first  that  she 
was  aware  when  she  was  touched.  She 
stopped  crying  when  she  was  cuddled  or 
patted.  She  showed  comfort  in  the  bath, 
which  may  have  been  in  part  due  to  freedom 
from  the  contact  of  clothes,  and  to  liking  for 
the  soft  touches  of  the  water.  She  responded 
with  sucking  motions  to  the  first  touch  of 


OF    A    BABY  47 

the  nipple  on  her  lips.  Preyer  found  the 
lips  of  new-born  babies  quite  delicately  sen- 
sitive, responding  even  to  the  lightest  touch ; 
and  there  are  other  sensitive  spots,  such  as 
the  nostrils  and  the  soles  of  the  feet. 

On  the  whole,  however,  the  rose-leaf  baby 
skin  proves  to  be  much  less  sensitive  than 
ours,  not  only  to  contact,  but  also  to  pain, 
and  perhaps  to  heat  and  cold,  though  this 
has  not  been  so  thoroughly  tested.  This  is 
not  saying,  of  course,  that  the  physiological 
effects  of  heat  and  cold  upon  the  baby  are 
unimportant. 

Our  ♦aby  had  no  experience  of  skin  pain 
in  her  early  days,  and  being  kept  at  an 
equable  temperature,  probably  received  no 
definite  sensations  either  of  heat  or  of  cold. 

The  foregoing  are  the  "  special  senses," 
that  is,  those  that  give  impressions  of  exter- 
nal things,  and  have  end  organs  to  receive 
and  make  definite  these  impressions,  — ■  the 
eye  at  the  end  of  the  optic  nerve,  the  differ- 
ent kinds  of  nerve  tips  in  the  skin,  and  so 


48  THE    BIOGKAPIIY 

forth.  Another  sense  now  claims  almost  to 
rank  with  them,  —  the  recently  studied  sense 
of  equilibrium  and  motion,  by  which  we  feel 
loss  of  balance  in  our  bodies  and  changes  in 
their  motion  (changes  only,  for  no  one  can 
feel  perfectly  smooth  motion).  This  sense 
has  been  traced  to  the  semicircular  canals  o£ 
the  ear;  and  as  this  part  of  the  ear  is  the 
oldest  in  evolution,  and  the  rudimentary  ears 
of  the  lower  orders  of  animals  are  quite  anal- 
ogous to  it  in  structure,  biologists  now  sus- 
pect that  hearing  may  be  a  more  recent  sense 
than  we  have  thought,  and  that  much  which 
has  been  taken  for  sense  of  sound  in  the 
lower  animals  —  even  as  high  as  fishes  — 
may  perhaps  be  only  a  deHcate  sense  of 
motion. 

I  failed  to  watch  for  this  motion  sense  in 
the  baby.  It  would  have  been  shown  by 
signs  that  she  felt  change  of  motion  when 
she  was  lifted  and  moved.  Equilibrium  sense 
she  must  have  used  as  soon  as  she  began  to 
balance  her  little  head,  but  in  the  first  limp 


OF    A    BABY  49 

and  passive  days  there  was  no  sign  of  it. 
Still,  there  are  tales  of  very  young  babies 
who  showed  disturbance,  as  if  from  a  feeling 
of  lost  equilibrium,  when  they  were  lowered 
swiftly  in  the  arms. 

There  is  besides  a  sort  of  sensibihty  to 
vibration  that  affects  the  whole  body.  We 
know  how  much  of  the  rhythm  of  music  may 
be  caught  quite  soundlessly  through  the 
vibrations  of  the  floor ;  and  it  is  said  (per- 
haps not  altogether  credibly)  that  it  was  thus 
that  Jessie  Brown  recognized  even  the  instru- 
ments and  the  tune  at  the  relief  of  Lucknow 
by  the  tremor  along  the  ground  before  a 
sound  was  audible.  A  jar,  affecting  the 
whole  body,  seems  to  be  felt  by  creatures  of 
very  low  organization.  Babies  are  undoubt- 
edly quite  susceptible  to  jarring  from  the 
earliest  days.  Champney's  baby  started 
when  the  scale  of  the  balance  in  which  he 
was  lying  immediately  after  birth  sprang  up. 

Then  there  is  the  "  muscle  sense  "  —  the 
feeling;  of  the  action  of  our  own  muscles; 


50  THE    BIOGEAPIIY 

and  a  most  delicate  and  important  sense  this 
is.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  the  baby  had  it 
from  the  first,  and  felt  the  involuntary  move- 
ments her  own  little  body  was  making,  for 
it  is  hardly  conceivable  how  else  she  could 
have  learned  to  make  voluntary  ones.  But 
that  is  another  story,  and  comes  later. 

Even  this  does  not  exhaust  the  list  of  sen- 
sations the  baby  could  feel.  There  was  the 
whole  group  of  "  organic  sensations,"  coming 
from  the  inner  organs,  —  hunger,  thirst,  or- 
ganic pain.  With  older  people,  nausea,  suf- 
focation, choking,  and  perhaps  some  others 
might  be  added ;  but  little  babies  certainly 
do  not  feel  nausea,  —  their  food  regurgitates 
without  a  qualm.  Nor  do  they  seem  to  feel 
disagreeable  sensations  when  they  choke  in 
nursing. 

Organic  pain  our  baby  had  her  touch  of 
in  the  usual  form  of  colic ;  and  hunger 
was  obviously  present  very  early,  though 
perhaps  not  in  the  first  two  or  three  days. 
Thirst   appeared   from   the   first,   and   was 


OF    A    BABY  51 

always  imperative.  Of  course,  the  milk  diet 
largely  satisfied  it,  bat  not  entirely.  Luck- 
ily our  baby  did  not  suffer  from  thirst,  for 
grandma,  nurse,  and  the  good  doctor  had  all 
entered  early  warning  that  "  babies  needed 
water,"  and  that  many  a  baby  was  treated 
for  colic,  insomnia,  nervousness,  and  natural 
depravity,  when  all  the  poor  little  fellow 
wanted  was  a  spoonful  of  cool  water.  The 
baby's  body,  as  I  said  in  my  last  chapter,  is 
largely  composed  of  water,  and  the  evapora- 
tion from  the  loose  texture  of  the  skin  is 
very  great.  After  children  can  talk,  they 
wear  out  the  most  robust  patience  with  inces- 
sant appeals,  night  and  day,  for  a  "  d'ink," 
and  consume  water  in  quantities  quite  beyond 
what  seems  rational.  But  their  cravinof  is 
doubtless  a  true  indication  of  what  they 
need. 

There  are  composites  of  sensation  which 
the  baby  experiences  very  early.  There  is 
the  feeling  of  clothes,  for  instance,  made  up 
of  warmth,  of  touch  and  pressure  sensations 


52  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

all  over  his  skin,  and  o£  changes  in  the  mus* 
cular  feelings  from  constraint,  and  in  the 
internal  feelings  from  the  effect  on  circula- 
tion. There  are  feelings  of  fatigue  in  one 
position,  made  up  of  sensations  of  touch,  of 
the  pressure  of  the  body's  weight  on  the 
under  surfaces  of  skin,  of  some  muscular 
tensions,  and  perhaps  of  several  other  ele- 
ments. Our  baby's  nurse  saved  her  much 
fretting  by  simply  changing  the  position  of 
the  little  body  from  time  to  time.  We  our- 
selves are  constantly  moving  and  shifting 
our  positions,  to  relieve  a  pressure  on  the 
skin  here,  or  a  muscular  tension  there,  but 
the  wee  baby  cannot  so  much  as  turn  his 
head  or  move  a  limb  at  will. 

Vaguest  and  most  composite  of  all  is  what 
is  called  "  common  sensation,"  or  "  general 
sensation  "  —  that  feeling  of  comfort  or  dis- 
comfort, vigor  or  languor,  diffused  through 
the  whole  body,  with  which  we  are  all  famil- 
iar. It  seems  to  be  very  primitive  in  origin 
—  indeed,  the  speculation  is  that  this  dim, 


OF    A    BABY  53 

pervasive  feeling  is  the  original  one,  the 
primitive  way  in  which  animal  tissue  re- 
sponded to  light  and  heat  and  everything, 
before  the  special  senses  developed,  gather- 
ing the  hght  sensations  to  one  focus,  the 
sound  sensations  to  another,  and  so  on.  But 
in  its  present  development  it  is  also  largely 
made  up  of  the  sum  of  all  the  organic  sensa- 
tions, and  even  of  dim  overflows  of  feehng 
from  the  special  senses. 

It  is  with  older  people  notably  connected 
with  emotional  states.  It  varies,  of  course, 
with  health  and  external  conditions;  yet 
each  person  seems  from  birth  to  be  held  to 
a  certain  fixed  habit  in  this  complex  under- 
lying condition  of  feehng  —  pleasant  with 
one,  unpleasant  with  another.  This  fixed 
habit  of  general  sensation  is  perhaps  the 
secret  of  what  we  call  temperament ;  while 
its  surface  variations  seem  to  be  mainly  re- 
sponsible for  moods. 

Our  baby  showed  temperament  —  luckily 
of  the  easy-going  and  cheerful  kind  —  from 


54  THE    BIOGRAniY 

her  first  day  (tliougli  we  could  hardly  see 
this  except  by  looking  back  afterward) ;  and 
there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  she  experi- 
enced some  general  sensation  from  the  first. 
It  was  evidently  of  a  pretty  neutral  sort, 
however  :  the  definite  appearance  of  high 
comfort  and  well-being  did  not  come  till  later; 
nor  were  moods  apparent  at  first. 

Now  in  all  this  one  significant  thing 
appears.  Sensations  had  from  the  first  the 
quality  of  being  agreeable  or  disagreeable. 
The  baby  could  not  wish,  prefer,  and  choose, 
for  she  had  not  learned  to  remember  and 
compare ;  but  she  could  like  and  dislike. 
And  this  was  shown  plainly  from  the  first 
hour  by  expressions  of  face  —  reflex  facial 
movements,  so  firmly  associated  in  the  human 
race  with  liking  and  disliking  that  the  most 
inexperienced  observer  recognizes  their  mean- 
ing at  once.  It  is  said  that  facial  expression 
comes  by  imitation,  and  that  the  blind  are 
therefore  deficient  in  it ;  but  this  is  not  true 
of  these  simplest  expressions  :  they  come  by 


OF    A    BABY  55 

inheritance,  and  are  present  in  the  first  hour 
of  life.  A  look  of  content  or  discontent,  the 
monotonous  cry,  and  vague  movements  of 
limbs,  head,  and  features,  —  these  are  the 
limits  of  expression  of  feeling  in  the  earliest 
days. 

It  would  seem  that  in  this  sense  condition 
there  was  nothing  that  could  give  the  baby 
any  feeling  of  inner  or  outer,  of  space  or 
locality.  We  have  some  glimpse  of  the  like 
condition  ourselves,  —  when  people  say  after 
an  explosion,  for  instance,  that  it  "  seemed 
to  be  inside  their  own  heads,"  or  when  we 
try  to  locate  a  cicada's  note,  or  when  we  feel 
diffused  warmth. 

Here  is  the  conception  I  gathered  of  the 
dim  life  on  which  the  little  creature  entered 
at  birth.  She  took  in  with  a  dull  comfort 
the  gentle  light  that  fell  on  her  eyes,  seeing 
without  any  sort  of  attention  or  comprehen- 
sion the  moving  1)1  urs  of  darkness  that  varied 
it.  She  felt  motions  and  changes  j  she  felt 
the  action  of  her  own  muscles ;  and,  after 


66  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

the  first  three  or  four  days,  disagreeable 
shocks  of  sound  now  and  then  broke  through 
the  silence,  or  perhaps  through  an  unnoticed 
jumble  of  faint  noises.  She  felt  touches  on 
her  body  from  time  to  time,  but  without  the 
least  sense  of  the  place  of  the  touch  (this 
became  evident  enough  later,  as  I  shall  relate 
in  its  order) ;  and  steady  slight  sensations  of 
touch  from  her  clothes,  from  arms  that  held 
her,  from  cushions  on  which  she  lay,  poured 
in  on  her. 

From  time  to  time  sensations  of  hunger, 
thirst,  and  once  or  twice  of  pain,  made 
themselves  felt  through  all  the  others,  and 
mounted  till  they  became  distressing ;  from 
time  to  time  a  feehng  of  heightened  comfort 
flowed  over  her,  as  hunger  and  thirst  were 
satisfied,  or  release  from  clothes,  and  the 
effect  of  the  bath  and  rubbing  on  her  circu- 
lation, increased  the  net  sense  of  well-being. 
She  felt  slight  and  unlocated  discomforts 
from  fatigue  in  one  position,  quickly  relieved 
by  the  watchful  nurse.     For  the  rest,  she  lay 


OF    A    BABY  57 

empty-minded,  neither  consciously  comfort- 
able nor  uncomfortable,  yet  on  the  whole 
pervaded  with  a  didl  sense  of  well-being. 
Of  the  people  about  her,  of  her  mother's 
face,  of  her  own  existence,  of  desire  or  fear, 
she  knew  nothing. 

Yet  this  dim  dream  was  flecked  all  through 
with  the  beginnings  of  later  comparison  and 
choice.  The  hght  was  varied  with  dark; 
the  feelings  of  passive  motion,  of  muscular 
action,  of  touch,  of  sound,  were  all  unlike 
each  other;  the  discomforts  of  hunger,  of 
pain,  of  fatigue,  were  different  discomforts. 
The  baby  began  from  the  first  moment  to 
accumulate  varied  experience,  which  before 
long  would  waken  attention,  interest,  dis- 
crimination, and  vivid  life. 


B8  THE    BIOGRAPHY 


IV 

THE    EARLIEST    DEVELOPMENTS 

Out  of  the  new-born  baby's  dim  life  of 
passivity  the  first  path  was  that  of  vision.  I 
noticed  about  the  end  of  the  second  week 
that  her  eyes  no  longer  wandered  altogether 
helplessly,  but  rested  with  a  long  and  con- 
tented gaze  on  bright  surfaces  they  chanced 
to  encounter,  such  as  the  shining  of  the  lamp 
on  the  white  ceiling,  or  our  faces  turned 
toward  the  light  as  she  lay  on  our  knees. 
It  was  not  active  looking,  with  any  power 
to  direct  the  eyes,  but  mere  staring ;  when 
the  gaze  fell  by  chance  on  the  pleasant  light, 
it  clung  there.  But  something  must  have 
come  to  pass,  that  it  could  stop  and  cling  to 
what  gave  it  pleasure. 

I  think  no  one  has  yet  analyzed  this  ear- 
liest stage  in  progress  toward  real  seeing, 


OF    A    BABY  59 

though  Professor  Sully  touches  on  an  expla- 
nation when  he  says  that  the  eyes  "  maintain 
their  attitude  under  stimulus  of  the  pleasure." 
We  know  that  muscular  action  is  normally 
caused  by  stimulus  received  from  the  nerve 
centres,  and  that  in  the  earliest  days  there 
seems  to  be  a  good  deal  of  random  discharge 
of  stimulus,  developed  by  the  growth  of  the 
centres,  and  causing  aimless  movements. 
Now  there  are  two  fundamental  and  pro- 
foundly important  things  about  this  nervous 
discharge.  One  is  that  pleasure,  attention, 
or  intensity  of  sensation  seems  to  have  the 
power  of  increasing  it,  and  thus  influencing 
the  action  of  the  muscles.  The  other  is  that 
the  discharge  always  tends  to  seek  the  same 
paths  it  has  used  before,  and  more  and 
more  easily  each  time ;  so  that  physiologists 
speak  of  it  as  a  current  deepening  its  chan- 
nels. It  is  really  nothing  like  a  flowing 
liquid,  nor  the  nerve  threads  along  which  it 
passes  like  channeled  watercourses.  Still, 
just  as  a  current  of  water  will  deepen  a  gully 


60  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

till  it  drains  into  itself  all  the  water  that  had 
spread  about  in  shallower  ditches,  so  the 
wave  of  molecular  change  running  along  a 
nerve  somehow  so  prepares  that  nerve  that  by 
and  by,  instead  of  spreading  about  through 
any  fibres  that  come  handy,  the  whole  energy 
will  drain  into  the  accustomed  ones.  Then, 
of  course,  the  muscles  to  which  these  run 
will  perform  more  and  more  easily  the  ac- 
customed acts.  Some  of  these  channels  — 
even  whole  connected  systems  of  them  — 
are  already  well  prepared  by  inheritance,  and 
hence  come  instinctive  and  reflex  actions ; 
many  are  still  to  be  deepened  by  the  baby's 
own  experience. 

Now  suppose  the  aimless  impulse  straying 
to  the  baby's  eye  muscles,  making  the  eyes 
roam  hither  and  yon ;  but  as  they  reach  a 
certain  position,  they  fall  upon  a  lighted 
surface,  and  a  pleasant  brightness  flows  back 
into  the  consciousness ;  and  something  stirs 
within  that  has  power  to  send  an  intenser 
current  through  those  same  fibres.     For  the 


OF    A    BABY  61 

time,  at  least,  that  channel  is  deepened,  the 
wandering  impulses  are  drained  into  it,  and 
the  eye  muscles  are  held  steady  in  that  posi- 
tion. And,  in  fact,  with  the  beginning  of 
starinof  the  irretrular  movements  of  head 
and  eyes  did  decline,  and  gradually  disap- 
pear. 

It  is  an  important  moment  that  marks  the 
beginning  of  even  a  passive  power  to  control 
the  movements  ;  and  when  my  grandmother 
handed  down  the  rule  that  you  should  never 
needlessly  interrupt  a  baby's  staring,  lest 
you  hinder  the  development  of  power  of 
attention,  she  seems  to  have  been  psycho- 
logically sound. 

A  fuller  and  pleasanter  life  now  seemed 
to  pervade  the  whole  little  body.  The  grim- 
aces of  vague  discomfort  were  disappearing, 
and  the  baby  began  to  wear  a  look  of  satis- 
faction as  she  lay,  warm  and  fed  and  dry, 
gazing  at  some  light  surface.  In  the  bath, 
where  the  release  from  clothes  and  the  stim- 
ulus  to   circulation    from    the  warm  water 


62  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

heightened  the  pleasant  condition  of  general 
sensation,  her  expression  approached  real 
delight ;  the  movements  of  her  limbs  were 
freer,  and  all  her  muscles  tenser. 

The  neck  muscles,  especially,  were  so  far 
"  innervated  "  —  that  is,  supplied  with  ner- 
vous energy  —  as  fairly  to  lift  her  head  from 
the  supporting  hand.  This  was  probably 
not  as  yet  a  real  effort  to  hold  up  the  head, 
only  a  drafting  of  surplus  energy  into  the 
neck  muscles,  partly  because  of  inherited 
aptitude,  partly  because  the  pleasure  received 
from  the  lifted  head  and  better  seeing  tended 
to  draw  the  energy  thither,  just  as  it  was 
drawn  to  the  eye  muscles  in  the  case  of  the 
staring.  At  least  one  careful  observer,  Mrs. 
Edith  Elmer  Wood,  records  this  action  of 
the  neck  muscles  on  the  first  day. 

It  was  at  this  period  that  the  baby  first 
smiled ;  but  being  forewarned  of  the  "  colic 
smile,"  which  counterfeits  so  exactly  the 
earliest  true  smiles,  —  fleeting  as  these  are, 
just  touching  the  mouth  and  vanishing,  —  I 


OF    A    BABY  63 

never  felt  sure  whether  the  baby  was  smiHng 
for  general  contentment  with  life,  or  whether 
a  passing  twinge  had  crossed  her  comfort 
and  drawn  her  lips  into  the  semblance  of  a 
smile ;  and  so  never  dared  to  record  the  ex- 
pression till  it  first  occurred  for  unmistakable 
pleasure. 

There  must  have  been  rapid  progress 
going  on  in  the  clearness  of  muscular  and 
touch  sensations,  and  in  the  forming  of  as- 
sociations in  the  baby's  mind ;  but  no  plain 
evidence  of  these  inner  processes  came  till 
the  fourth  week.  Then  I  noticed  that  the 
baby,  when  crying  with  hunger,  would  hush 
as  soon  as  she  was  taken  in  the  arms  in  the 
position  usual  in  nursing,  as  if  she  recognized 
the  preliminaries,  and  knew  she  was  about 
to  be  satisfied.  She  could  not,  in  fact,  have 
remembered  or  expected  anything  as  yet ;  it 
was  not  memory,  but  a  clear  instance  of  thf 
working  of  that  great  law  of  association  by 
which  the  raw  material  of  the  senses  was  to 
be  wrought  up  into  an  orderly  mental  life. 


64  THE  BIOGRAPHY 

The  substance  of  the  law  is  that  when 
experiences  have  repeatedly  been  had  to- 
gether, the  occurrence  of  one  of  them  (still 
more,  of  several  out  of  a  group,  as  in  this 
case)  tends  to  bring  up  into  consciousness 
the  others.  It  is  a  law  that  underlies  psychic 
life  as  profoundly  as  the  law  that  nerve 
energy  seeks  its  old  channels  underUes  phy- 
sical life.  Indeed,  it  is  in  a  sense  the  psychic 
side  of  the  same  law ;  for  it  implies  that  when 
a  group  of  nerve  centres  have  formerly  acted 
together,  the  action  of  one  tends  to  bring 
on  that  of  the  rest.  So,  since  the  baby  had 
often  experienced  the  feeling  of  that  par- 
ticular position  (a  combination  of  tactile  and 
muscular  and  organic  sensations)  in  connec- 
tion with  the  feehng  of  satisfied  hunger, 
that  comfortable  feeling,  the  missing  member 
of  the  group,  came  into  her  consciousness 
along  with  the  rest,  some  moments  in  ad- 
vance of  the  actual  satisfaction. 

I  have  said  that  this  is  not  memory,  yet 
there  is  in  it  a  germ  of  memory.     A  past 


OF    A    BABY  65 

experience  is  brought  back  to  consciousness ; 
and  if  it  were  brouo;ht  back  as  a  definite 
idea,  instead  of  a  vague  feeling,  it  would  be 
memory. 

Close  on  this  came  another  great  advance 
in  vision.  This  was  on  the  twenty-fifth  day, 
toward  evening,  when  the  baby  was  lying  on 
her  grandmother's  knee  by  the  fire,  in  a  con- 
dition of  high  well-being  and  content,  gazing 
at  her  grandmother's  face  with  an  expression 
of  attention.  I  came  and  sat  down  close  by, 
leaning  over  the  baby,  so  that  my  face  must 
have  come  within  the  indirect  range  of  her 
vision.  At  that  she  turned  her  eyes  to  my 
face  and  gazed  at  it  with  the  same  appearance 
of  attention,  and  even  of  some  effort,  shown 
by  a  slight  tension  of  brows  and  lips,  then 
turned  her  eyes  back  to  her  grandmother's 
face,  and  again  to  mine,  and  so  several 
times.  The  last  time  she  seemed  to  catch 
sight  of  my  shoulder,  on  which  a  high  light 
struck  from  the  lamp,  and  not  only  moved 
her  eyes,  but  threw  her  head  far  back  to  see 


66  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

it  better,  and  gazed  for  some  time,  with  a 
new  expression  on  her  face  —  "a  sort  of  dim 
and  rudimentary  eagerness,"  says  my  note. 
She  no  longer  stared,  but  really  looked. 

Clear  seeing,  let  us  here  recall,  is  not  done 
with  the  whole  retina,  but  only  with  a  tiny 
spot  in  the  centre,  the  so-called  "yellow 
spot,"  or  "  macula  lutea."  If  the  image  of 
an  object  falls  to  one  side  of  this,  especially 
if  it  is  far  to  one  side,  we  get  only  a  shape- 
less impression  that  something  is  there ;  we 
"  catch  a  glimpse  of  it,"  as  we  say.  In  order 
really  to  look  at  it  we  turn  our  eyeballs 
toward  the  object  till  the  image  falls  on  the 
spot  of  clear  vision.  We  estimate  the  dis- 
tance through  which  to  turn  the  balls,  down 
to  minute  fractions  of  an  inch,  by  the  feeling 
in  the  eye  muscles. 

This  was  what  the  baby  had  done,  and  I 
do  not  dare  to  say  how  many  philosophical 
and  psychological  discussions  are  involved  in 
her  doing  it.  Professor  Le  Conte  thinks 
that  it  shows  an  inborn  sense  of  direction, 


OF    A    BABY  67 

since  the  eyes  are  turned,  not  toward  the 
side  on  which  the  ray  strikes  the  retina,  but 
toward  the  side  from  wliich  the  ray  enters 
the  eye  ;  that  is,  the  baby  thinks  out  along 
the  line  of  the  ray  to  the  object  it  comes 
from,  thus  putting  the  object  outside  him- 
self, in  space,  as  we  do.  Professor  Wundt, 
the  great  German  psychologist,  is  positive 
that  the  baby  has  no  sense  of  space  or  direc- 
tion, but  gains  it  by  just  such  measurements 
with  the  eye  muscles ;  that  there  is  no  right 
nor  left,  up  nor  down,  for  him,  but  only 
associations  between  the  look  of  things  off 
at  one  side,  and  the  feel  of  the  eye  action 
that  bringfs  them  to  central  vision. 

This  means  that  before  a  baby  can  carry 
the  eye  always  through  just  the  right  arc  to 
look  at  an  object,  he  must  have  made  this 
association  between  the  look  of  things  and 
the  feel  of  the  action  separately  for  each 
point  of  the  retina.  It  is  a  great  deal  for  a 
baby  to  have  learned  in  three  weeks ;  still, 
babies  have  to  learn  fast  if  they  are  ever  to 


68  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

catch  up  with  the  race ;  and  in  the  early 
roamings  of  the  eye  they  experience  over 
and  over  all  manner  cf  transits  of  images  to 
and  fro  across  the  retina.  Probably,  too,  it 
was  still  only  partially  learned. 

I  watched  now  for  what  Preyer's  record 
had  led  me  to  expect  as  the  next  develop- 
ment in  vision  —  the  ability  to  follow  a  mov- 
ing object  with  the  eyes ;  that  is,  to  hold 
the  yellow  spot  fixed  on  the  object  as  it 
moved,  moving  the  eyeball  in  time  with  it 
in  order  to  do  so.  I  used  my  hand  to  move 
to  and  fro  before  the  baby,  and  could  not 
satisfy  myself  that  she  followed  it,  though 
she  sometimes  seemed  to  ;  but  the  day  after 
she  was  a  month  old  I  tried  a  candle,  and 
her  eyes  followed  it  unmistakably;  she  even 
threw  her  head  back  to  follow  it  farther.  In 
trying  this  experiment,  one  should  always 
use  a  bright  object,  should  make  sure  the 
baby's  eyes  are  fixed  on  it,  and  then  should 
move  it  very  slowly  indeed,  right  and  left. 

So  far,  there  is  no  necessary  proof  of  will. 


OF    A    BABY  69 

Longet  found  that  the  eyes  and  head  of  a 
pig-eon  whose  cerebrum  had  been  removed 
would  follow  a  moving  light.  We  ourselves 
can  sit  absorbed  in  thought  or  talk,  yet  fol- 
low unconsciously  with  our  eyes  the  move- 
ment of  a  lantern  along  a  dark  road ;  and  if 
something  appears  on  the  outer  edge  of  our 
vision  we  often  turn  quite  involuntarily  to 
look.  But  the  baby's  new  expression  of  in- 
tellijrence  and  interest  showed  that  whether 
she  willed  the  movements  or  not,  she  attended 
to  the  new  impressions  she  was  getting. 

Professor  Preyer  noticed  the  same  dawn 
of  intelligence  in  his  baby's  face  at  about 
the  same  stage.  And  it  is  worth  while  to  ob- 
serve that  when  I  came  to  study  my  record 
I  was  surprised  to  find  how  often  such  an 
awakening  look,  an  access  of  attention,  won- 
der, or  intelligence,  in  the  baby's  face,  had 
coincided  with  some  marked  step  in  devel- 
opment and  signalized  its  great  mental  im- 
portance. I  should  advise  any  one  who  is 
observing  a  baby  to  be  on  the  lookout  for 


70  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

this  outward  and  visible  sign  of  an  inward 
and  spiritual  unfolding. 

In  both  these  visual  developments  the 
baby  had  proved  able  to  use  her  neck  in  co- 
operation with  her  eyes,  throwing  back  her 
head  to  see  farther.  It  began  at  the  same 
time  to  seem  that  she  was  really  and  deliber- 
ately trying  to  hold  up  her  head  for  the  same 
purpose  of  seeing  better.  She  not  only 
straightened  it  up  more  and  more  in  the 
bath,  but  when  she  was  laid  against  one's 
breast  she  would  lift  her  head  from  the 
shoulder,  sometimes  for  twenty  seconds  at  a 
time,  and  look  about.  Preyer  sets  this  down 
as  the  first  real  act  of  will. 

The  baby's  increased  interest  in  seeing 
centred  especially  on  the  faces  about  her, 
at  which  she  gazed  with  rapt  interest.  Even 
during  the  period  of  mere  staring,  faces  had 
oftenest  held  her  eyes,  probably  because  they 
were  oftener  brought  within  the  range  of 
her  clearest  seeing  than  other  light  surfaces. 
The  large,  light,  moving  patch  of  the  human 


OF    A    BABY  71 

face  (as  Preyer  has  pointed  out)  coming  and 
going  in  the  field  of  vision,  and  oftener 
chancing .  to  hover  at  the  point  of  clearest 
seeing  than  any  other  object,  embellished 
with  a  play  of  high  Kghts  on  cheeks,  teeth, 
and  eyes,  is  calculated  to  excite  the  highest 
degree  of  attention  a  baby  is  capable  of  at  a 
month  old.  So  from  the  very  first  —  before 
the  baby  has  yet  really  seen  his  mother  — 
her  face  and  that  of  his  other  nearest  friends 
become  the  most  active  agents  in  his  develop- 
ment, and  the  most  interesting  things  in  his 
experience. 

Our  baby  was  at  this  time  in  a  way  aware 
of  the  difference  between  companionship  and 
solitude.  In  the  latter  days  of  the  first 
month  she  would  lie  contentedly  in  the  room 
with  people  near  by,  but  would  fret  if  left 
alone.  But  by  the  end  of  the  month  she 
was  apt  to  fret  when  she  was  laid  down  on 
a  chair  or  lounge,  and  to  become  content 
only  wlien  taken  into  the  lap.  This  was  not 
yet  distinct  memory  and  desire,  but  it  showed 


72  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

that  associations  of  pleasure  had  been  formed 
"with  the  hip,  and  that  she  felt  a  vague  dis- 
comfort in  the  absence  of  these. 

Just  before  she  was  a  month  old  came  an 
advance  in  hearing.  So  far  this  sense  had 
remained  little  more  than  a  capacity  for  be- 
ing startled  or  made  restless  by  harsh  sounds. 
I  had  tested  it  on  the  twenty-third  day,  and 
found  that  the  baby  scarcely  noticed  the 
sound  of  an  ordinary  call  bell  unless  it  was 
struck  within  about  six  inches  of  her  ear, 
and  suddenly  and  sharply  at  that;  and  on 
the  twenty-sixth  day  she  showed  no  sign  of 
hearing  single  notes  of  the  piano,  struck 
close  to  her,  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest. 
But  the  next  day,  at  the  sound  of  chords, 
strongly  struck,  she  hushed  when  fretting 
with  hunger,  and  listened  quietly  for  five 
minutes  —  her  first  pleasant  experience 
through  the  sense  of  hearing. 

In  the  following  days  she  would  lie  and 
take  in  the  sound  of  the  chords  with  a  look 
'of  content,  staring  at  the  same  time  into  the 


OF    A    BABY  73 

face  of  the  person  who  held  her,  as  if  she 
associated  the  sound  with  that.  Only  a  few 
days  later,  when  she  was  a  month  old,  I 
thought  that  her  pleasure  in  companionship 
was  increased  if  she  was  talked  and  crooned 
to  ;  and  it  is  likely  that  by  this  time,  though 
she  had  not  hitherto  noticed  voices,  she  was 
beginning  to  get  them  associated  with  the 
human  face  —  probably  to  the  enhancement 
of  its  charm. 

There  were  signs  now,  too,  that  touch 
sensations,  in  their  principal  seat,  the  lips, 
were  becoming  a  source  of  pleasure.  The 
first  smile  that  I  could  conscientiously  re- 
cord occurred  the  day  before  the  baby  was  a 
month  old,  and  it  was  provoked  by  the  touch 
of  a  finger  on  her  lip ;  and  a  day  or  two 
later  she  smiled  repeatedly  at  touches  on  her 
lip.  The  day  before  she  was  a  month  old, 
also,  when  lier  lips  were  brought  up  to  the 
nipple,  she  laid  hold  upon  it  with  them  — 
the  first  seizing  of  any  sort,  for  her  hands 
were  still  in  their  original  helplessness,  wav- 


74  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

ing  vaguely  about  at  the  will  of  the  nerve 
currents. 

It  is  plain  that  the  eyes  led  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  psychic  life.  Yet  the  baby  was 
still  far  from  real  seeing.  Professor  Preyer 
believes  that  there  is  at  this  stage  no  "  ac- 
commodation "  of  the  eyes  to  near  and  far, 
although  they  can  now  be  focused  for  right 
and  left:  that  is,  both  yellow  spots  can  be 
brought  to  bear  in  unison  on  an  object,  but 
the  lenses  do  not  yet  adjust  themselves  to 
different  distances.  Though  the  baby  may 
have  perceived  direction,  then,  she  could  not 
have  perceived  depth  in  space.  It  was  only 
when  an  object  chanced  to  be  at  the  distance 
for  which  her  eyes  were  naturally  adjusted 
that  she  could  have  seen  it  clearly. 

Nor  is  it  likely  that  even  then  she  saw 
anything  as  a  definite  outline,  but  only  as  an 
undefined  patch.  The  spot  of  clear  vision 
in  our  eyes  is  very  small  (a  twenty-five  cent 
piece  would  cover  all  the  letters  I  can  take 
in  at  once  on  this  page,  if  I  do  not  let  my 


OF    A    BABY  75 

eyes  move  in  the  least),  and  the  only  way 
we  ourselves  see  anything  in  definite  outline 
is  by  running  our  eyes  swiftly  over  its  sur- 
face and  around  its  edges,  with  long  trained 
and  unconscious  skill.  The  baby  had  not 
yet  learned  to  do  this.  Her  world  of  vision, 
much  as  it  pleased  her,  was  still  only  patches 
of  light  and  dark,  with  bits  of  glitter  and 
motion.  She  could  turn  her  eyes  and  lift 
her  head  a  little  to  make  the  vision  clearer ; 
but  except  about  her  neck,  eyes,  and  in  a 
slight  degree  her  lips,  she  had  no  control  of 
her  body.  She  had  gained  much  in  group- 
ing and  associating  together  her  experiences, 
yet  on  the  whole  she  still  lived  among  dis- 
jointed impressions. 

In  the  light  of  such  interpretations,  the 
speculative  attempts  to  arrange  a  system  of 
cradle  education  become  futile.  What  can 
a  swinging  ball  do  for  a  pupil  whose  sense 
apparatus  is  not  yet  in  condition  to  see  the 
outline  of  the  ball  definitely  ?  Froebel  liini- 
self  could  not  have  been  expected  to  know 


76  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

much  of  the  condition  of  a  baby's  sense  ap« 
paratus ;  but  modern  Froebelians  would  be 
better  apostles  of  his  almost  Messianic  in- 
spiration if  they  were  willing  to  throw  frankly 
aside  his  unfounded  speculations  and  his  ob- 
solete science.  The  letter  killeth,  but  the 
spirit  giveth  life. 

Meanwhile,  nature  has  provided  an  edu- 
cational appliance  almost  ideally  adapted  to 
the  child's  sense  condition,  in  the  mother's 
face,  hovering  close  above  him,  smiling, 
laughing,  nodding,  with  all  manner  of  de- 
lightful changes  in  the  high  lights  ;  in  the 
thousand  little  meaningless  caressing  sounds, 
the  singing,  talking,  calling,  that  proceed 
from  it ;  the  patting,  cuddling,  lifting,  and 
all  the  ministrations  that  the  baby  feels  while 
gazing  at  it,  and  associates  with  it,  till  finally 
they  group  together  and  round  out  into  the 
idea  of  his  mother  as  a  whole. 

Our  baby's  mother  rather  resented  the 
idea  of  being  to  her  baby  only  a  collection 
of  detached  phenomena,  instead  of  a  mamma; 


OF    A    BABY  77 

but  the  more  you  think  of  it  the  more  flat- 
tering it  is  to  be  thus,  as  it  were,  dissolved 
into  your  elements  and  incorporated  item 
by  item  into  the  very  foundations  of  your 
baby's  mental  life.  Herein  is  hinted  much 
of  the  philosophy  of  personality;  and  Pro- 
fessor Baldwin  has  written  a  solid  book, 
mainly  to  show  from  the  development  of 
babies  and  little  children  that  all  other  peo- 
ple are  part  of  each  of  us,  and  each  of  us  is 
part  of  all  other  people,  and  so  there  is  really 
no  separate  personality,  but  we  are  all  one 
spirit,  if  we  did  but  know  it. 


78  THE    BIOGRAPHY 


BEGINNINGS    OF    EMOTION   AND    PROGRESS    IN 
SENSE   POWERS 

The  baby  entered  on  her  second  month 
well  content  with  her  fragmentary  little 
world  of  glancing  lights  and  shining  sur- 
faces, chords  and  voices,  disconnected  touches 
and  motions.  Her  smiles  began  to  be  fre- 
quent and  jolly.  It  was  always  at  faces  that 
she  smiled  now  :  nothing  else  seemed  half  as 
entertaining.  The  way  in  which  a  baby,  in 
these  early  weeks,  gazes  and  gazes  up  into 
one's  face,  and  smiles  genially  at  it,  wiles  the 
very  heart  out  of  one ;  but  the  baby  means 
little  enough  by  it. 

In  this  fortnight  her  pleasures  were  en- 
larged by  introduction  to  a  baby  carriage. 
The  outdoor  sights  and  sounds  were  of 
course  wasted  on  her  at  this  stage  of  her 


OF    A    BABY  79 

seeing  and  hearing  powers ;  but  she  liked 
the  feeling  of  the  motion,  and  lay  and  en- 
joyed it  with  a  tranquilly  beatific  look.  Per- 
haps also  the  fresher  air  and  larger  light  sent 
some  dim  wave  of  pleasant  feeling  through 
her  body. 

Some  days  earlier,  when  carried  out  in 
arms  for  her  first  outdoor  visit,  she  had  found 
the  light  dazzling,  and  kept  her  eyes  tight 
shut.  In  all  I  have  said  of  babies'  pleasure 
in  light,  I  have  meant  moderate  light :  the 
little  eyes  are  easily  hurt  by  a  glare.  There 
are  nursemaids,  and  even  mothers,  who  will 
wheel  a  baby  along  the  street  with  the  sun 
blazing  full  in  his  face,  and  who  will  keep  a 
liirht  burnins:  all  niMit  for  their  own  con- 
venience  in  tending  him ;  and  in  later  years 
his  schoolbooks  will  get  the  credit  of  having 
weakened  his  eyes.  Nature  protects  the  little 
one  somewhat  at  the  outset,  for  at  first  the 
eyes  open  by  a  narrow  slit,  which  admits  but 
scanty  light:  our  bal)y  was  just  beginning,  at 
a  mouth  old,  to  open  her  eyes  like  other  folk. 


80  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

Pleased  though  the  baby  was  with  her  new 
powers,  her  life  at  this  period  was  not  all  of 
placid  content.  Ambition  had  entered  in. 
It  had  already  seemed  as  if  the  mechanical 
lifting  of  the  head  was  passing  into  real 
effort  to  raise  it;  and  day  by  day  the  inten- 
tion grew  clearer,  and  the  head  was  held  up 
better.  Now,  too,  appeared  the  first  sign  of 
control  over  the  legs.  Laid  on  her  face  on 
the  lounge,  the  baby  did  not  cry,  but  turned 
her  head  side  wise  and  freed  her  face,  and  at 
the  same  time  propped  her  body  with  her 
knees.  This  was  on  the  first  day  of  the 
month.  A  few  days  later  she  was  propping 
herself  with  her  knees  in  the  bath  every  day. 

With  increase  of  joy  and  power  came  also 
the  beginning  of  tears.  This,  too,  was  on 
the  first  day  of  the  month.  The  tears  were 
shed  because  she  had  waked  and  cried  some 
time  without  being  heard.  When  she  was 
at  last  taken  up,  her  eyes  were  quite  wet. 
As  every  nurse  knows,  wee  babies  do  not  cry 
tears.     When  they  do,  it  does  not  mean  that 


OF    A    BABY  81 

any  higher  emotional  level  has  heen  gained, 
only  that  the  tear  glands  have  begun  to  act. 
Nor  have  I  any  reason  to  suppose  that  in 
this  case  the  baby  felt  fear  at  being  left 
alone.  It  was  simply  that  she  was  uncom- 
fortable, and  needed  attention ;  and  the 
attention  delaying,  the  discomfort  mounted, 
till  it  provoked  stronger  and  stronger  reflex 
expressions. 

The  first  fright  did  occur,  however,  a  few 
days  later  in  the  same  week  ;  but  it  was  in  a 
much  more  primitive  form  than  fear  of  soli- 
tude. The  baby  was  lying  half  asleep  on 
my  lap  when  her  tin  bath  was  brought  in 
and  set  down  rather  roughly,  so  that  the 
handles  clashed  on  the  sides.  At  this  she 
started  violently,  with  a  cry  so  sharp  that  it 
brought  her  grandfather  anxiously  in  from 
two  rooms'  distance ;  she  put  up  her  lip  at 
the  same  time,  ^^^th  the  regular  crying  grim- 
ace known  to  every  nursery, — the  first  time 
she  had  done  this,  —  and  it  was  fully  five 
minutes  before  her  face  was  tranquil  again. 


82  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

There  had  been  reflex  starting  at  sounds 
from  the  first  week,  and  Professor  Preyer 
calls  this  an  expression  of  fright ;  but  to  me 
(and  Professor  Sully  regards  it  in  the  same 
way)  it  seemed  purely  mechanical.  Our  baby 
would  even  start  and  cry  out  in  her  sleep 
at  a  sound  without  waking.  But  now  there 
was  clearly  something  more  than  reflex  start- 
ing. It  was  not  yet  true  fear,  for  fear  means 
a  sense  of  danger,  an  idea  of  coming  harm, 
and  the  baby  could  have  had  no  such  idea. 
But  there  was  some  element  of  emotion  to  be 
seen,  akin  to  fear ;  and  (if  we  regard  plea- 
sure and  pain  as  psychologists  are  disposed 
to  do,  not  as  emotions  in  themselves,  but 
only  as  a  quality  of  agreeableness  or  dis- 
agreeableness  in  our  feelings)  here  was  the 
first  dawn  of  any  emotion.  Fright,  that  was 
but  a  step  above  mere  physical  shock,  led 
the  way  into  the  emotional  life. 

This  probably  gives  a  true  hint  of  the 
history  of  emotional  development  in  the 
race :  for  in  the  animal  world,  too,  fear  ap- 


OF    A    BABY  83 

pears  earliest  o£  all  the  emotions,  and  in  the 
simplest  forms  of  fright  is  hardly  to  be  dis- 
tinguished from  mere  reflex  action  ;  and  it  is 
caused  oftener  by  sound  than  by  anything 
else.  When  we  remember  the  theory  that 
hearing  is  developed  from  the  more  ancient 
motion  sense,  we  are  tempted  to  trace  the 
origin  of  fright  still  farther  back,  to  the  very 
primitive  reflex  sensibility  to  jarring  move- 
ment, of  which  I  have  spoken  before. 

And  now  the  baby  had  come  to  six  weeks 
old,  and  could  hold  up  her  head  perfectly 
for  a  quarter  of  a  minute  at  a  time,  and  liked 
greatly  to  be  held  erect  or  in  sitting  position. 
Apparently  all  this  was  for  the  sake  of  see- 
ing better,  for  her  joys  still  centred  in  her 
eyes.  She  had  made  no  advance  in  visual 
power,  however,  except  that  within  a  few 
days  she  could  follow  with  her  eyes  the 
motion  of  a  person  passing  near  her. 

Human  faces  were  still  the  most  entertain- 
ing of  all  objects.  She  gazed  at  them  with 
her  utmost  look  of  iuteutuess,  making  move- 


84  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

ments  with  her  hands,  and  panting  in  short, 
audible  breaths.  Nothincr  else  had  ever  ex- 
cited her  so,  except  once  a  spot  of  sunlight 
on  her  white  bed. 

There  were  signs  that  her  experiences 
gathered  more  and  more  into  groups  in  her 
mind,  by  association.  I  have  spoken  of  her 
earlier  association  between  the  nursing  posi- 
tion and  being  fed ;  now  she  would  check 
her  hungry  crying  as  soon  as  she  felt  herself 
lifted ;  and  a  few  days  later,  as  soon  as  her 
mouth  was  washed  out  —  a  ceremony  that 
invariably  came  before  nursing.  At  seven 
weeks  old  she  opened  her  mouth  for  the 
nipple  on  being  laid  in  the  proper  position. 
The  food  association  group  was  enlarging ; 
but  sight  did  not  yet  enter  into  it:  the  look 
of  the  breast  did  not  seem  to  bring  the  faint- 
est suggestion  of  satisfied  hunger,  and  the 
baby  would  lie  and  cry  with  her  lips  an  inch 
from  it.  This  is  natural,  for  she  could  never 
really  have  seen  it  at  this  stage  of  the  devel* 
opment  of  vision. 


OF    A    BABY  85 

I  have  said  that  in  such  associations  there 
is  a  germ  of  memory.  There  is  a  sort  o£ 
habit  memory,  too,  that  appears  very  early. 
Impressions  that  have  been  received  over  and 
over  gather  a  sort  of  famiUarity  in  the  baby's 
mind ;  and  while  he  does  not  yet  recognize 
the  familiar  things  themselves,  yet  he  feels  a 
change  from  them  as  something  strange  — 
it  jars  somehow  the  even  current  of  his  feel- 
ings. Or  where  impressions  have  been  espe- 
cially agreeable,  they  are  vaguely  missed 
when  they  are  absent.  The  consciousness 
of  difference  between  society  and  solitude, 
which  our  baby  had  showed  at  the  end  of 
the  first  month,  was  habit  memory  of  this 
sort. 

Professor  Preyer  thinks  that  his  baby 
showed  habit  memory  as  early  as  the  first 
week,  perceiving  a  new  food  to  be  different 
from  the  old.  Our  baby  (who  knew  no  food 
but  mother's  milk)  experienced  a  new  taste 
once  or  twice,  when  dosed  for  colic,  and 
never  showed  the  faintest  sense  of  novelty  at 


86  THE    BIOGKAniY 

it  till  she  was  six  weeks  old.  Then  she  was 
given  a  little  sugar  for  hiccoughs,  and  made 
a  face  of  what  seemed  high  disgust  over  it ; 
but  this  particular  face  has  been  observed 
more  than  once,  and  is  known  to  be  common 
in  babies  at  a  new  taste,  even  a  pleasant  one. 
It  seems  to  be  caused  by  a  sort  of  surprise 
affectinor  the  face  muscles. 

A  few  days  later  the  baby  showed  surprise 
more  plainly.  She  lay  making  cheerful  little 
sounds,  and  suddenly,  by  some  new  combina- 
tion of  the  vocal  organs,  a  small,  high  crow 
came  out  —  doubtless  causing  a  most  novel 
sensation  in  the  little  throat,  not  to  speak 
of  the  odd  sound.  The  baby  fell  silent  in- 
stantly, and  a  ludicrous  look  of  astonish- 
ment overspread  her  face.  Here  was  not 
only  evidence  of  the  germs  of  memory,  but 
also  the  appearance  of  a  new  emotion,  that 
of  genuine  surprise ;  and,  like  fright,  it  is 
one  that  is  closely  related  to  simple  nerve 
shock.  From  being  startled  to  being  sur- 
prised (as  to  being  frightened)  is  not  a  long 
step. 


OF    A    BABY  87 

I  have  just  spoken  of  the  baby  as  making 
little  sounds.  This  was  a  new  accomplish- 
ment. Until  a  few  days  before,  she  had 
made  no  sounds  except  some  inarticulate 
fretting  noises,  the  occasional  short  outcry 
when  startled,  and  the  "  dismal  and  monoto- 
nous" cry  that  began  with  the  first  day. 
This  original  cry  was  clearly  on  the  vowel  ci 
(as  in  fair),  with  a  nasal  prefix  —  nga  ;  but 
late  in  the  sixth  week  it  began  to  be  varied 
a  little.  In  the  fretting,  too,  a  few  syllables 
appeared.  The  new  sounds  were  mostly 
made  in  the  open  throat,  and  grew  out  of 
the  old  nrjci  by  slight  changes  in  the  position 
of  the  vocal  organs  —  iifj,  and  hng,  and 
hng-h ;  but  now  and  then  there  was  a 
short  w^y  gS,,  or  ha,  or  even  a  lip  sound, 
as  m-h^i. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  broad  Italian  a  is 
of  all  sounds  the  easiest,  the  one  naturally 
made  from  an  open  throat :  but  the  records 
show  botli  German  and  American  babies  be- 
ginning with  the  flat  il,  or  shorter  a.     Our 


88  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

baby  scarcely  used  any  other  vowel  sound 
for  weeks  yet. 

Little  sounds  of  content,  too,  began  in  the 
sixth  week  —  mainly  inarticulate  grunts  and 
cooing  murmurs ;  but  in  the  course  of  the 
seventh  week,  besides  the  sudden  crow,  there 
were  a  few  tiny  shouts,  —  a-a-ha,  —  a  gurgle, 
and  some  hard  g  sounds,  ga,  and  g-g-g,  which 
passed  in  the  eighth  week  into  a  roughened 
gh,  a  sort  of  scraping,  gargling  sound,  not 
in  the  English  language. 

Our  baby  had  a  leaning  to  throat  sounds ; 
but  other  babies  begin  with  the  lip  sounds, 
and  some,  it  is  said,  with  the  trilling  I  and  r. 
It  seems  to  be  only  chance  what  position  of 
the  vocal  organs  is  first  used ;  but  after  once 
beginning  to  articulate,  the  baby  seems  to 
pass  from  sound  to  sound  by  slight  changes 
(probably  made  accidentally  in  using  the  old 
sounds),  and  so  goes  through  the  hst  with 
some  regularity. 

This  practice  in  sounds  may  be  at  first 
quite  without  will,  a  mere  overflow  of  energy 


OF    A    BABY  89 

into  the  vocal  organs ;  but  it  is  liiglily  impor- 
tant none  the  less,  for  any  creatui-e  that  is 
to  use  human  speech  must  get  the  speaking 
muscles  into  most  delicate  traininff.     Tliink 

o 

what  fine  and  exact  difference  in  muscular 
contractions  we  must  make  to  be  able  to  say 
"  ball,"  and  be  sure  that  it  will  not  come  out 
"pall"! 

For  a  week  or  two  now  the  baby  made  a 
good  deal  of  progress  in  control  of  her  body. 
She  strove  valiantly  every  day  to  keep  her 
head  erect,  and  made  some  little  advance. 
In  the  bath  she  began  to  push  with  her  feet 
against  the  foot  of  the  tub,  so  hard  that  her 
mother  could  not  keep  the  little  head  from 
bumping  on  the  other  end.  She  pulled 
downward  with  her  arms  when  her  mother 
held  them  up  in  wiping  her.  These  pushing 
and  pulling  movements  may  have  been  made 
for  the  pleasure  of  the  feeling,  or  they  may 
have  been  involuntiiry.  Perhaps  they  were 
accidental  movements,  passing  gradually  into 
voluntary  ones.     In  either  case,  as  they  de- 


90  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

veloped,  the  old  irregular  movements  of  legs 
and  arms  passed  away,  as  those  of  the  head 
and  face  had  done  before. 

One  new  bit  of  muscular  control  was  un- 
doubtedly voluntary  —  a  trick  of  putting  out 
and  ch-awing  back  the  tip  of  her  tongue  be- 
tween her  pui'sed  hps.  And  this  was  some- 
thing more  than  just  one  new  voluntary 
movement.  The  important  thing  was  that 
she  was  using  the  movement  to  bring  to- 
gether the  evidence  of  two  different  senses 
into  one  2^erception. 

When  something  touches  against  our  fin- 
gers, we  have  one  sort  of  feeling  in  them, 
and  quite  another  when  we  pass  them  over 
the  thing  and  "  feel  of  it ;  "  and  this  other, 
clearer  feeling  is  really  a  compound  one, 
made  up  of  the  touch  sensation  in  the  skin 
and  the  muscle  sensation  in  the  moving  fin- 
gers. It  is  called  "  active  touch,"  and  it  is 
a  wonderful  key  to  the  world  around  us  — 
so  wonderful  that  with  this  alone  it  proved 
possible  to   educate   Laura   Bridgptnan   and 


OF    A    BABY  91 

Helen  Keller.  This  active  touch  the  baby 
had  now  developed  in  tongue  and  Hps  ;  not 
yet  in  the  fingers. 

The  passive  sensation  of  light  had  abeady 
been  blended  with  muscle  sensation  in  some- 
thing the  same  way,  by  the  voluntary  move- 
ment of  turning  and  focusing  the  eyes ;  but 
that  complete  seeing  which  we  might  call 
"active  sight  "  is  a  more  complex  power 
than  active  feeling,  and  there  were  other  as- 
sociations yet  to  be  made  before  it  could  be 
fully  built  up.  And  I  hope  it  will  not  spoil 
the  interest  of  the  story  of  the  baby's  sense 
development  if  I  say  here  that  the  plot  is 
going  to  turn  mainly  on  these  two  combina- 
tions, muscle  sense  with  sight  and  muscle 
sense  with  touch ;  and  then  recombination 
of  these  two  with  each  other  —  all  welded 
together  by  voluntiiry  movements,  growing 
out  of  involuntary  ones. 

All  this  time  the  baby  had  had  a  daily 
source  of  placid  pleasui-e  in  listening  to 
chords  on  the  piano  —  no  longer  heavy  stac- 


92  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

cato  chords,  but  flowing  ones,  in  the  middle 
octaves.  The  baby  of  theory  cares  for  no- 
thing but  eating  and  sleeping ;  but  our 
baby,  even  after  she  was  already  fretting 
with  hunger,  would  forget  all  about  it  for 
ten  minutes,  if  one  would  take  her  to  the 
piano.  Hunger,  after  it  grew  really  strong, 
was  a  sensation  that  swept  all  before  it ;  but 
on  the  whole,  food  was  a  matter  of  small 
interest  compared  with  the  world  of  hght 
and  touch  and  sound. 

As  for  sleep,  the  baby  slept,  from  the  first, 
in  pretty  long  periods,  —  six  and  seven  hours 
was  not  uncommon,  —  and  was  wide  awake 
between  sleeps.  At  such  times  she  would  he 
by  the  half  hour,  looking  peacefully  about 
her,  or  gazing  into  our  faces  with  smiles. 
When  we  nodded,  laughed,  and  talked  to 
her,  her  smiles  seemed  hke  friendly  re- 
sponses; but  this  could  have  meant  nothing, 
except  that  with  our  demonstrations  those 
little  constellations  of  high  hghts  and  glitters, 
our  faces,  bobbed  and  twinkled  in  a  more 
amusing;  manner  than  ever. 


OF    A    BABY  93 

At  ei2"ht  -weeks  old  came  the  final  sta2:e 
in  mastery  of  the  mechanism  of  vision  —  the 
power  of  accommodation,  or  adjusting  the 
lenses  for  different  distances.  It  may  have 
been  present  even  earUer  :  it  is  a  hard  thing 
for  the  observer  to  know.  But  the  indica- 
tions are  that  it  really  did  happen  when  I 
thought,  the  day  the  baby  was  eight  weeks 
old.  She  was  lying  on  her  mother's  knees, 
fixing  an  unusually  serious  and  attentive 
gaze  on  my  face,  and  would  not  take  her 
eyes  away  ;  indeed,  as  her  mother  turned  her 
in  undressing,  she  screwed  her  head  around 
comically  to  keep  her  eyes  fixed.  At  last, 
after  some  fifteen  minutes,  she  turned  her 
head  clear  over,  and  gazed  as  earnestly  at 
her  mother's  face.  To  see  what  she  would 
do,  her  mother  turned  her  again  toward 
me,  and  once  more  she  surveyed  me  for  a 
time,  and  again  turned  her  head  and  looked 
directly  at  her  mother. 

What  was  in  the  little  mind  ?  Was  she 
beginning  to  discriminate  and  compare,  for 


94  THE    BIOGEAPIIY 

the  first  time  setting  apart  as  two  separate 
thiiiofs  the  two  faces  that  had  bent  over  her 
oftenest?  Or  was  she  simply  using,  on  the 
most  convenient  object,  a  new  power  of  ad- 
justing her  eyes,  which  filled  her  with  serious 
interest  by  the  new  clearness  it  gave  to  what 
she  saw  ?  At  all  events,  she  would  not  have 
looked  from  one  to  the  other  with  such  long 
and  attentive  regard  if  she  had  not  been 
able  to  focus  both  faces,  at  their  different 
distances ;  so  that  I  felt  sure  the  power  of 
accommodation  was  really  there. 

But  there  was  more  in  the  incident  than 
just  the  advance  in  vision.  Hitherto  when 
the  baby  had  turned  her  head  to  look,  it  had 
been  only  at  something  that  she  had  already 
a  glimpse  of,  off  at  the  edge  of  the  field  of 
vision.  Now  she  turned  to  look  for  some- 
thing quite  out  of  sight,  —  something,  there- 
fore, that  must  have  been  present  as  an  idea 
in  the  Httle  mind,  or  she  could  not  have 
looked  for  it.  And  in  view  of  what  I  have 
said  of  the  mother's  face  as  the  great  educa- 


OF    A    BABY  95 

tional  appliance  in  the  early  months,  it  is 
worth  noticing  that  it  was  this  which  gave 
the  baby  her  fii-st  idea,  so  far  as  I  could 
detect. 

We  come  a  step  nearer,  too,  to  true  mem- 
ory, when  the  baby  can  keep  thus,  even 
for  a  few  minutes,  the  idea  of  something 
formerly  seen.  It  was  still  mainly  habit 
memory,  however.  She  looked  for  an  accus- 
tomed sight  in  an  accustomed  place,  bring- 
ing it  to  the  point  of  clear  vision  by  an 
accustomed  movement  of  the  neck  muscles. 
There  was  no  evidence  till  considerably  later 
that  she  was  capable  of  remembering  a  sin- 
gle, special  experience. 

The  next  day  she  was  singularly  bright 
and  sunny,  smiling  all  day  at  every  one. 
She  stopped  in  the  middle  of  nursing  to 
throw  her  head  back  and  gaze  at  the  bow  at 
her  mother's  neck,  and  would  not  go  on  with 
the  comparatively  uninteresting  l)usiness  of 
food  till  tlie  b(nv  was  put  out  of  sight.  That 
night  she  slept  eight   hours   at   a   stretch, 


96  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

lonoer  than  she  had  ever  clone.     Was  the 

o 

Httle  brain,  perhaps,  wearied  with  the  new 
rush  of  impressions,  which  came  with  the 
new  power  of  focusing  ? 

The  day  after  she  woidd  he  a  while  unus- 
ually silent  and  sober,  looking  about  her  and 
moving  her  hands  a  little  ;  then  she  would 
fret  to  be  lifted  and  held  against  one's  shoul- 
der, where  she  could  hold  her  head  up  and 
look  about.  She  was  able  now  to  hold  it  up 
a  long  tune  by  resting  it  for  a  few  seconds 
every  half  minute  or  so,  against  my  cheek, 
which  I  held  close  to  give  her  the  chance. 
But  to-day  she  was  not  satisfied  with  having 
her  head  erect :  she  persistently  straightened 
her  back  up  against  the  arm  that  supported 
her  —  a  new  set  of  muscles  thus  coming 
under  control  of  her  will.  As  often  as  I 
pressed  her  down  against  my  shoidder,  she 
would  fret,  and  straighten  up  again  and  set 
to  work  dihgently  looking  about  her. 

After  this  her  progress  in  holding  up  her 
head  was  suddenly  rapid,  and  by  the  end  of 


OF    A    BABY  97 

the  montli,  four  days  later,  she  could  balance 
it  for  many  minutes,  with  a  Httle  wobbHng-. 
This  uncertainty  soon  disappeared,  and  the 
erect  position  of  the  head  was  accomphshed 
for  life. 

During  these  last  days  of  the  month  the 
baby  was  possessed  by  the  most  insatiate  im- 
pulse to  be  up  where  she  could  see.  It  was 
hard  to  think  that  her  fretting  and  even  wail- 
ing when  forced  to  He  down  could  mean  only 
a  formless  discontent,  and  not  a  clear  idea  of 
what  she  wanted.  Still,  it  is  not  uncommon, 
when  an  instinct  is  thwarted,  to  feel  a  dim 
distress  that  makes  us  perfectly  wretched 
without  knowing  why.  As  soon  as  she  was 
held  erect,  or  propped  up  sitting  amid  cush- 
ions, she  was  content ;  but  the  first  time  that 
ohe  was  allowed  to  be  up  thus  most  of  the 
day,  she  slept  afterward  nine  unbroken  hours, 
recuperating,  pr()l)ably,  quite  as  much  from 
the  looking  and  the  tiikinjj  in  that  the  httle 
brain  and  eyes  had  been  doing  as  from  any 
muscular  fatigue  there  may  have  been  in  the 
position. 


98  THE    BIOGRAPHY 

Such  is  the  "  mere  life  of  vegetation  "  the 
baby  lived  during  the  first  two  months.  No 
grown  person  ever  experiences  such  an  ex- 
pansion of  Hfe,  such  a  progress  from  power 
to  power  in  that  length  of  tune.  Nor  was 
our  httle  girl's  development  anything  unus- 
ual for  a  healthy,  well-conditioned  child,  so 
far  as  other  records  give  material  for  com- 
parison. Preyer's  boy  was  later  than  she  in 
getting  his  head  balanced,  but  he  arrived 
at  full  accommodation  (and  that  is  the  most 
important  work  of  the  first  two  months)  at 
almost  exactly  the  same  age  as  she ;  and  so 
did  Mrs.  Hall's  boy.  I  do  not  know  of  any 
other  records  that  make  a  clear  statement 
on  this  point. 


OF    A    BABY  99 


VI 

PROGRESS    TOWARD    GRASPING. 

The  baby's  development,  as  I  have  said, 
consisted  now  mainly  in  forming  associa- 
tion groups  in  her  mind  in  two  series,  which 
we  mio^ht  call  a  sioht-motor  series  and  a 
touch-motor  series.  There  had  been  a  leap 
forward  in  the  sight-motor  series  when  "  ac- 
commodation "  was  learned.  Now  the  touch- 
motor  series  came  to  the  front,  and  step  by 
step  led  on  to  the  great  accomplishment  of 
grasping. 

First,  when  we  laid  the  baby's  face  up 
against  ours,  her  little  tongue  was  put  out 
to  lick  the  cheek  that  she  felt,  warm  and 
smooth,  against  her  lips.  This  was  a  more 
advanced  use  of  active  feeling  than  the  mere 
passing  of  her  tongue  over  her  own  lips,  for 
that  must  have  been  done  accidentally  many 


100        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

times  before  she  began  to  do  it  on  purpose ; 
and  the  association  between  the  movement 
and  the  feehng  had  been  helped  by  the 
double  sensation  —  one  feeling  in  the  lips 
and  another  in  the  tongue  every  time  they 
touched. 

This  doubling  of  sensation,  which  occurs 
every  time  one  part  of  the  body  touches 
another  part,  often  seemed  to  wake  special 
attention  in  the  baby,  and  thus  help  on  a 
development.  Later,  it  had  a  great  part  to 
play  in  teaching  her  the  boundaries  of  her 
own  body,  and  the  difference  between  the 
Me  and  the  Not-me.  Even  now,  she  must 
have  been  somewhat  aware  of  a  different 
feeling  when  she  passed  her  tongue  over 
her  own  sensitive  lips,  and  when  she  passed 
it  over  the  unresponsive  cheek  of  some  one 
else. 

So  far,  the  tongue,  not  the  hand,  was  her 
organ  of  touch.  But  now  the  fingers  were 
showing  the  first  faint  sign  of  their  future 
powers  —  nothing  more  than  a  little  special 


OF    A    BABY  101 

sensibility,  such  as  the  lips  had  shown  in  the 
first  month  :  we  would  see  the  baby  holding 
her  finger  tips  together  prettily  (  when  by 
chance  they  had  collided),  as  if  there  were 
a  feelino;  there  that  interested  her.  Here 
again  there  was  double  sensation. 

In  these  same  early  days  of  the  third 
month  there  was  beginning:  another  devel- 
opment  that  was  to  end  by  making  the  hand 
the  successful  rival  of  hps  and  tongue  for 
purposes  of  grasping  and  feeling.  The  baby 
was  trying  to  get  her  fists  to  her  mouth. 

The  movement  of  the  hands  toward  the 
head  is  a  common  one  in  the  first  weeks,  by 
reason  of  prenatal  habit,  and  thus  it  had 
often  happened  tliat  the  little  fists,  or  as 
much  of  them  as  could  be  accommodated, 
had  blundered  into  the  mouth  ;  and  inter- 
esting sensations  (double  sensations  again, 
in  fists  and  mouth)  had  been  experienced. 
The  baby  had  at  the  same  time  felt  in  her 
arms  the  movement  that  always  went  with 
these  interesting  sensations,  and   now   she 


102         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

was  trying  to  repeat  it.  Within  a  week  she 
had  mastered  it,  and  could  mumble  and  suck 
her  fists  at  will  —  a  great  addition,  naturally, 
to  the  comfort  of  life. 

Meanwhile  the  reflex  clasping,  which  had 
always  taken  place  when  an  object  was  laid 
in  the  baby's  palm,  was  growing  fii-mer  and 
longer,  and  more  like  conscious  holding; 
and  I  noticed  that  the  thumb  was  now  "  op- 
posed"  in  clasping  —  that  is,  shut  down 
opposite  the  fingers,  an  important  element 
in  the  skill  of  human  grasping.  And  now, 
when  the  fingers  came  in  contact  with  con- 
venient things  —  folds  of  the  towel,  for  in- 
stance —  the  hands  would  clasp  them  me- 
chanically, just  as  the  lips,  since  the  first 
month,  had  laid  hold  on  a  breast  or  cheek 
that  touched  them. 

This  had  an  important  result.  The  httle 
hand  would  presently  go  to  the  mouth,  still 
mechanically  clasping  the  fold  of  towel  or 
dress,  which  in  consequence  was  sucked  and 
mumbled,  too.     In  this  way  the  baby  got 


OF    A    BABY  103 

sundry  novel  sensations,  and  a  chain  of  as- 
sociations beofan  to  form  :  she  was  to  learn 
thus,  by  and  by,  that  when  she  felt  touch 
sensations  in  her  fingers,  she  could  get  Hve- 
lier  ones  in  her  mouth  (and  also  the  pleasant 
muscular  feehng  of  sucking),  by  the  move- 
ments of  clasping,  and  of  lifting  her  arm. 
But  she  had  not  yet  learned  it :  objects 
(except  her  own  hands)  were  still  carried  to 
her  mouth  only  by  accident. 

By  the  twelfth  week  the  baby  had  found 
that  her  thumb  was  better  for  sucking  pur- 
poses than  chance  segments  of  fist,  and  could 
turn  her  hand  and  get  the  convenient  httle 
projection  neatly  into  her  mouth.  She  got 
hold  of  it  more  by  di\'ing  her  head  down  to 
it  than  by  lifting  the  hand  to  the  mouth. 
Seizing  with  the  moutli,  by  motions  of  the 
head,,  like  a  dog,  instead  of  using  the  hand 
to  wait  on  the  mouth,  seemed  still  her  nat- 
ural way. 

But  the  hands  were  gaining.  In  this 
same  twelfth  week  I  saw  the  little  finger- 


104        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

tips  go  fumbling  and  feeling  over  our  hands 
and  dresses.  They,  too,  had  learned  active 
touch,  as  the  tongue  had  learned  it  more 
than  a  month  before. 

Just  at  this  time  we  began  to  bring  the 
baby  to  the  table  —  nominally  so  that  no 
one  need  stay  away  from  meals  to  look  after 
her ;  really  for  the  sake  of  her  jovial  com- 
pany at  our  sober  grown-up  board,  where 
she  would  sit,  propped  amid  cushions  in  her 
high  chair,  gazing  and  smiling  sociably  at 
our  faces,  crowing  and  flourishing  her  arms 
in  joy  at  the  lights  and  the  rattle  of  dishes, 
forming  the  sole  topic  of  conversation  to  an 
extent  that  her  bachelor  uncle  had  his  pri- 
vate and  lonely  opinion  about.  The  high 
chair  was  one  of  those  that  have  a  wooden 
tray  fastened  across  the  front,  and  here  were 
placed  several  handy  objects  —  rattle,  and 
ring,  and  string  of  spools.  This  was  by  the 
wisdom  of  grandma,  who  saw  the  approach 
of  the  power  of  grasping.  One  may  often 
see  the  little  hands  fluttering  empty,  the  lit- 


OF    A    BABY  105 

tie  brain  restless,  craving  its  natural  devel- 
opment (for  grasping  is  much  more  a  matter 
of  brain  development,  through  the  forming 
of  associations,  than  of  hand  development), 
when  there  is  no  wise  grandma  to  see  that 
rattle  and  ring  and  spools  lie  "  handy  by  " 
a  little  before  the  baby  is  ready  to  use  them. 
To  wait  till  he  knows  how  to  grasp  before 
giving  him  things  to  practice  on  is  like 
keeping  a  boy  out  of  the  water  till  he  knows 
how  to  swim.  Such  impeding  of  the  natu- 
ral activities  is  responsible  for  a  good  deal 
of  the  fretting  of  babies. 

It  was  not  three  days  till  I  saw  the  little 
hands  go  fumbling  across  the  tray,  seeking 
the  objects  they  had  become  used  to  find- 
ing there ;  and  when  they  touched  rattle  or 
spool,  they  laid  hold  on  it.  Nor  was  this 
the  old  mechanical  clasping  :  it  was  volun- 
tary action,  and  as  clumsy  as  new  voluntary 
action  is  apt  to  bo,  compared  to  involuntary. 
The  ba])y  did  not  know  how  to  turn  her 
hand  and  take  up  a  thing  neatly  :  if   she 


106        TJIE    BIOGRAPHY 

touched  it  in  such  fashion  that  she  could 
shut  down  her  fingers  on  it  somehow  or 
anyhow,  she  would  manage  to  lift  it  —  stuck 
between  two  fingers  from  behind,  once,  when 
the  back  of  her  hand  had  touched  it ;  if  not, 
she  would  go  on  fumbling  till  she  did.  In 
two  or  three  days  more  she  was  laying  hold 
on  things  and  carrying  them  to  her  mouth 
with  plain  intention. 

Here  was  a  sort  of  grasping,  but  it  was 
grasping  by  feeling  only.  The  baby  had  yet 
no  idea  of  an  object,  which  she  could  locate 
with  the  eye  and  then  lay  hold  on  with  the 
hand.  She  had  simply  completed  the  chain 
of  association  I  spoke  of  above  :  she  had 
learned,  that  is,  that  after  certain  groping 
movements,  feelings  of  touch  appeared  in 
her  hands  ;  and  that  then,  after  movements 
of  clasping  and  lifting,  these  feelings  reap- 
peared in  more  lively  and  pleasing  form  in 
her  mouth.  She  never  looked  at  the  objects 
she  touched.  There  is  no  reason  to  think 
they  could  have  been  to  her  anything  more 


OF    A    BABY  107 

than  sensations  in  her  own  hands  and  mouth. 
The  sig-ht-motor  and  touch-motor  series  had 
not  yet  coalesced.  But  in  these  last  days 
of  the  third  month  both  had  come  to  the 
point  where  they  were  ready  to  begin  the 
fusing  process,  and  give  the  baby  her  world 
of  outer  objects. 

Before  I  go  back  to  relate  what  had 
been  going  on  meanwhile  in  the  sight-motor 
series,  I  must  stop  to  speak  of  some  other 
developments  of  the  month. 

Memory,  for  one  thing,  had  plainly  ad- 
vanced. By  the  tenth  week  the  baby  had 
shown  some  doubtful  signs  of  knowing  one 
face  from  another ;  and  in  the  twelfth  she 
plainly  recognized  her  grandfather  with  a 
smile  and  joyous  cry,  as  he  came  in.  Her 
first  recognition,  therefore  (it  is  worth  while 
to  notice),  was  not  of  the  mother,  the  source 
of  supplies,  but  of  the  face  that  had  offered 
most  entertainment  to  the  dawninjr  mental 
powers,  not  only  because  of  the  white  beard, 
the  spectacles,  and  the  shining  bald  brow, 


108        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

but  because  of  the  boyish  abandon  with 
which  grandpa  played  with  her,  ducking  his 
face  down  to  hers. 

A  few  days  later  she  showed  that  she  knew 
at  least  the  feeling  of  her  mother's  arms. 
For  some  weeks  no  one  else  had  put  her  to 
sleep ;  and  now  when  sleepy  she  fretted  in 
other  arms,  but  nestled  down  contentedly 
and  went  to  sleep  as  soon  as  she  felt  herself 
in  her  mother's.  The  association  of  that  es- 
pecial feeling  had  become  necessary  to  sleep. 

The  instinctive  language  of  sign  and 
sound  had  developed  a  good  deal.  From 
the  first  day  of  the  month,  the  baby's  joy 
in  sights  began  to  be  expressed  more  exu- 
berantly, with  flying  arms  and  legs,  with 
panting,  murmuring,  and  babbling,  smiles 
and  even  small  chuckles,  and  sometimes  lit- 
tle shouts  and  crows.  A  new  look  of  grief, 
too,  the  parallelogram  shaped  mouth  that  all 
babies  make  in  crying,  appeared. 

In  the  tenth  week  she  began  to  turn  her 
head  aside  in  refusal  or  dislike  —  a  gesture 


OF    A    BABY  109 

that  one  may  see  far  down  in  the  animal 
kingdom.  A  dog,  for  instance,  uses  it  very 
expressively.  It  comes  plainly  from  the 
simple  effort  to  turn  away  from  what  is  un- 
pleasant, and  develops  later  to  our  shake  of 
the  head  for  "  No  ;  "  and  when  w^e  notice 
how  early  the  development  of  control  over 
head  and  neck  is,  how  much  in  advance  of 
any  use  of  the  hands,  we  see  that  it  is  nat- 
ural for  this  to  be  the  oldest  of  all  gestures. 
In  the  last  days  of  the  month  came  two 
notable  evidences  of  growing  will.  One  was 
the  baby's  persistent  effort  to  get  the  tip  of 
her  rattle  (it  was  set  on  a  slender  ivory  shaft) 
into  her  mouth.  Sometimes  it  went  in  by 
chance  ;  sometimes  it  hit  her  lip,  and  in 
that  case  she  would  stretch  her  mouth  to 
take  it  in,  moving  her  head  rather  than  the 
rattle.  But  if  it  brought  up  against  her 
cheek,  too  far  away  to  be  captured  by  such 
efforts,  after  trying  a  little,  she  would  lower 
tlie  rattle,  and  make  a  fresh  start  for  better 
luck. 


no         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

This  may  seem  highly  unintelligent  ac- 
tion ;  yet  after  all,  as  Professor  Morgan  says, 
it  is  by  the  method  of  "  trial  and  error  "  that 
most  of  our  acts  of  skill  (and  perhaps  all 
such  acts  of  the  lower  animals)  are  learned. 
In  trial  after  trial  the  baby  associated  the 
muscular  feeling  of  the  successful  movement 
■with  the  feeling  of  the  rattle  tip  in  her 
mouth,  and  repeated  these  movements  more 
and  more  correctly,  dropping  the  unsuccess- 
ful ones.  In  just  this  way  the  sharpshooter, 
through  repeated  trials  and  misses,  learns 
to  deflect  his  rifle  barrel  this  way  and  that 
with  an  infinite  fineness  of  muscular  con- 
tractions, which  he  could  never  get  by  rea- 
soning on  it. 

The  other  effort  of  will  was  in  sitting  up. 
During  the  whole  month  the  baby  had  in- 
sisted on  a  sitting  position,  and  had  wailed 
as  vigorously  over  being  left  flat  on  her  back 
as  over  being  left  hungry.  She  had  soon 
tried  to  take  the  matter  into  her  own  hands, 
and  made  many  efforts  to  lift  herself,  some- 


OF    A    BABY  111 

times  by  pulling  on  our  fingers  when  we  had 
laid  them  in  her  hands,  sometimes  by  sheer 
strain  of  the  abdominal  muscles.  She  never 
succeeded  in  raising  more  than  her  head  and 
shoulders  till  the  last  week  of  the  month : 
then  she  did  once  lift  herself,  and  in  the 
following  days  tried  with  the  utmost  zeal  to 
repeat  the  success.  She  would  strive  and 
strain,  with  a  grave  and  earnest  face,  her 
whole  baby  soul  evidently  centred  on  the 
achievement.  She  would  tujr  at  our  finsrers 
till  her  little  face  was  crimson  ;  she  would 
lift  her  head  and  shoulders  and  strain  to  rise 
higher,  fall  back  and  try  it  again,  till  she 
was  tired  out.  The  day  she  was  three 
months  old,  she  tried  twenty-five  times, 
with  scarcely  a  pause,  and  even  then,  though 
she  was  beginning  to  fret  pitifully  with  dis- 
appointment, she  did  not  stop  of  her  own 
accord. 

Unless  she  began  with  a  somewhat  high 
rechning  position,  or  hor  feet  or  hips  were 
held,  her  little  legs  would  lly  up,  and  she 


112         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

could  not  get  the  leverage  to  lift  her  body. 
For  that  matter,  even  with  us  the  legs  are 
lighter  than  the  trunk,  and  few  women  can 
overcome  the  difference,  and  lift  themselves 
by  sheer  strength  of  the  abdominal  muscles, 
without  having  the  feet  held  :  and  a  baby's 
lesTS  are  so  much  liofhter  than  ours  that  it 
must  be  for  several  years  a  sheer  impossibil- 
ity for  him  to  do  it. 

However,  in  the  few  cases  when  the  baby 
did  manage,  by  some  advantage  of  position, 
or  by  holding  to  our  fingers,  to  lift  herself, 
she  could  not  balance  in  the  least,  and  top- 
pled over  at  once.  What  with  this  discour- 
agement, and  restraint  from  her  elders, 
who  thought  her  back  by  no  means  strong 
enough  yet  for  sitting  alone,  she  soon  after 
gave  up  the  effort  to  raise  herself,  and 
waited  till  she  was  older. 

It  was  in  this  same  eventful  thirteenth 
week  that  the  baby  first  looked  about, 
searching  for  something  that  was  out  of 
sight.     A   lively    young    girl    with    bright 


OF    A    BABY  113 

color  and  a  charming  pair  of  dangling  eye- 
glasses was  visiting  us,  and  stood  by,  laugh- 
ing and  prattling  to  the  baby  while  she  was 
bathed.  The  little  one,  greatly  interested, 
turned  her  head,  smiling  and  crowing,  to 
watch  Miss  Charmian's  movements,  and  to 
look  for  her  when  she  was  out  of  sight.  In 
this,  as  in  the  definite  efforts  to  feel  the  rat- 
tle tip  in  her  mouth,  and  to  renew  the  sen- 
sations of  sitting  up,  we  see  action  guided 
by  an  idea  of  that  which  is  absent,  that  is 
by  imagination,  to  a  certain  extent  at  least ; 
though  it  is  probable  that  there  was  still  as 
much  of  the  mere  working  of  association  as 
of  definite  ideas.  The  memory  that  the 
baby  showed  when  she  looked  about,  search- 
ing for  an  expected  sight,  instead  of  sim- 
ply turning  to  an  accustomed  place,  is  clearly 
more  than  mere  habit  memory.  Yet  it  was 
still  not  true  memory :  it  was  not  an  idea 
coming  back  to  the  mind  after  an  interval, 
but  only  a  sort  of  after-shine  of  the  thing, 
held  in  the  mind  for  a  few  moments  after 
the  thing  itself  had  disappeared. 


114        THE    BIOGKAPHY 

And  now  to  come  back  to  the  sight-motor 
series  :  Did  the  baby  still  see  objects  only  as 
blurs  of  lio'ht  and  shade  ?  She  had  the  full 
mechanism  of  her  eyes  in  working  order  as 
soon  as  accommodation  was  acquired  ;  but  it 
is  certain  that  it  takes  much  practice  to  learn 
to  use  that  mechanism.  It  is  an  old  story 
that  people  born  blind,  receiving  their  sight 
by  surgical  operations,  have  to  learn  to  see. 
Professor  Preyer  quotes  from  Dr.  Home  the 
case  of  a  twelve  year  old  boy  who,  nearly  a 
month  after  the  operation,  could  not  tell 
whether  a  square  card  had  corners  or  not 
by  looking  at  it ;  and  of  another  seven  year 
old  boy  who  had  to  learn  to  recognize  trian- 
gles and  squares  (which  he  knew  well  by 
touch)  by  running  his  eye  along  the  edges 
and  counting  the  corners.  It  must  have 
taken  immense  practice  for  us  all  to  learn  to 
flash  the  eye  so  quickly  over  and  about  an 
object  that  we  seem  to  take  in  its  shape  with 
one  look.  This  was  the  task  that  lay  before 
the  baby  now. 


OF    A    BABY  115 

How  long  it  took  we  can  only  guess. 
Some  observers  have  taken  it  for  granted 
that  the  first  recognition  o£  a  face  showed 
clear  seeing  had  arrived.  But  the  group  of 
lights  and  shades  is  so  different  in  each  face 
that  a  baby  might  well  learn  to  know  them 
apart  without  distinct  outlines.  We  have 
all  seen  French  paintings  in  which  the  eyes, 
the  smile,  some  high  lights  on  cheek,  chin, 
and  nose,  and  a  cloudy  suggestion  of  hair 
and  beard,  are  all  that  emerge  from  the  dark 
canvas,  and  yet  we  may  see  easily  for  whom 
the  portrait  is  meant.  Our  baby  had  recog- 
nized no  face  yet  except  her  grandfather's, 
where  the  beard,  spectacles,  and  shining  bald 
brow  made  recognition  easy  without  any  out- 
line. 

But  in  another  direction  we  get  a  plainer 
hint.  I  have  spoken  above  of  the  joyous 
excitement  roused  in  the  baby  by  interesting 
sights  (not  only  faces  now,  but  also  sundry 
bright  things,  and  dangling,  moving  things) 
early  in  the  month,     liy  the  middle  of  the 


116        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

month  her  smiles  were  fewer,  and  she  looked 
about  her  earnestly  and  soberly  ;  and  in  the 
last  week  I  noted,  without  understanding, 
the  expression  of  surprise  that  had  come  into 
her  face  as  she  gazed  this  way  and  that. 
The  wide,  surprised  eyes  must  have  meant 
that  something  new  was  before  them.  Were 
things  perhaps  beginning  to  separate  them- 
selves off  to  the  baby's  sight  in  definitely 
bounded  spaces  ? 

I  must  go  on  into  the  record  of  the  next 
month  for  more  light  on  this  question  :  for 
the  wonder  grew  day  by  day,  and  for  weeks 
the  baby  was  looking  about  her  silently, 
studying  her  world.  She  would  inspect  the 
familiar  room  carefully  for  many  minutes, 
looking  fixedly  at  object  after  object  till  the 
whole  field  of  vision  was  reviewed,  then  she 
would  turn  her  head  eagerly  and  examine 
another  section  ;  and  when  she  had  seen  all 
she  could  from  one  place,  she  would  fret  till 
she  was  carried  to  another,  and  there  begin 
anew   her   inspection    of   the   room   in   its 


OF    A    BABY  117 

changed  aspect  —  always  "with  the  look  of 
surprise  and  eagerness,  eyes  wide  and  brows 
raised. 

We  can  only  guess  what  was  going  on  in 
the  baby  mind  all  this  time ;  but  I  cannot 
resist  the  thought  that  I  was  looking  on  at 
that  very  process  which  must  have  taken 
place  somewhere  about  this  time  —  the 
learning  to  see  things  clear  and  separate, 
by  running  the  eyes  over  their  surfaces  and 
about  their  edgfes. 

With  this,  sight  and  muscle  sense  alone, 
touch  and  muscle  sense  alone,  had  done  all 
they  could  to  reveal  the  world  to  the  baby, 
and  there  lay  close  before  her  the  further 
revelations  that  were  to  be  made  when  touch, 
sight,  and  muscle  sense  could  be  focused  all 
together  on  the  objects  about  her.  It  was 
a  wonderful  sight  to  see,  as  the  baby  pressed 
forward  to  the  new  understanding,  eager, 
amazed,  and  absorbed. 


118        THE    BIOGRAPHY 


VII 

SHE     LEARNS      TO      GRASP,     AND      DISCOVERS 
THE  WORLD  OF  THINGS 

The  baby  had  finished  her  first  quarter 
year.  A  few  days  before,  as  we  have  seen, 
she  had  looked  for  a  person  out  of  sight ; 
and  now,  just  at  the  end  of  the  third  month, 
she  showed  that  she  could  bring  together  the 
testimony  of  sight  and  hearing,  by  turning 
to  look  in  the  direction  of  a  sound. 

Here  seems  evidence  that  by  this  time 
(whether  she  had  done  so  before  or  not)  she 
"  externalized  "  her  impressions  more  or  less  : 
that  is,  when  waves  of  sound  struck  on  her 
tympanum,  or  of  light  on  her  retina,  she  did 
not  simply  yee^  the  resulting  sensation,  but 
threw  it  back,  so  to  speak,  along  the  line  of 
the  wave,  and  seemed  to  herself  to  perceive 
something   outside   there,  away   from   her. 


OF    A    BABY  119 

For  when  she  looked  around,  seeking  what 
she  did  not  yet  see,  expecting  sight  sensa- 
tions and  hearing  sensations  to  come  from 
the  same  source,  it  is  impossible  to  think  she 
did  not  have  a  feeling  of  something  really 
there,  outside  herself. 

Step  by  step  with  the  sense  of  outside- 
ness  there  must  have  come  a  sense  of  inside- 
ness,  of  self,  for  the  two  are  only  opposite 
sides  of  one  feeling  —  that  is,  the  feeling  of 
difference  between  oneself  and  the  outer 
world.  We  must  not  suppose  that  before 
the  baby  externalized  her  impressions  she 
felt  everything  as  happening  inside  her : 
she  must  have  just  felt  things,  with  no  in- 
side or  outside  about  it. 

This  may  seem  impossible,  but  really  the 
sense  of  insideness  and  outsideness  is  not  hard 
to  upset,  even  at  our  time  of  life.  Dizziness 
or  mental  shock  will  do  it.  Sometimes  on 
waking  from  deep  sleep  we  find  our  sense 
of  a  separate  bodily  self  gone,  and  gather  it 
slowly  back.     We  may  almost  lose  ourselves 


120         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

by  lying  itlly,  without  thought  or  care,  in 
some  great,  continuous  sound,  Uke  the  roar 
of  a  cataract,  till  we  do  not  know  which  is 
ourself  and  which  is  the  outward  sound. 
Mystics  and  ecstatics  have  made  an  art  of 
changing  the  bodily  feelings  by  fasting  and 
other  means,  till  the  usual  marks  of  dif- 
ference among  impressions,  by  which  we 
externalize  some  and  refer  others  to  our  own 
bodies,  are  lost ;  and  with  them  the  sense  of 
being  in  the  body,  surrounded  by  an  outer 
world. 

Though  she  externalized  sight  and  sound, 
it  is  not  likely  that  the  baby  at  this  stage 
distinsfuished  external  and  internal  in  touch 
impressions,  unless  about  her  face.  She  had 
not  at  all  learned  the  bounds  of  her  own 
body  yet.  Below  her  arms,  her  control  of 
it  was  almost  nothing.  She  could  not  turn 
herself  over.  She  had  never  passed  her 
hands  over  her  own  surface,  and  knew  it  only 
by  chance  touches.  She  understood  so  little 
her  relation  even  to  her  hands,  whicli  were 


OF    A    BABY  121 

fairly  under  control,  that  when  they  met  by 
chance,  each  hand  would  seize  the  other,  and 
try  to  take  it  to  her  mouth.  She  w^as  often 
aggrieved  by  the  unexj^ected  result  when  she 
tried  to  flourish  her  arm  and  go  on  sucking 
her  thumb  at  the  same  time,  and  could  not 
imagine  what  had  suddenly  snatched  the 
cherished  thumb  away.  Her  feeling  of  her- 
self must  have  been  very  different  from  ours  : 
more  hke  that  of  a  conventional  cherub,  all 
but  her  head  dissolved  away  into  oneness 
with  the  outside  world. 

Did  she,  then,  seeing  the  vision  of  the 
world,  see  it  as  a  world  of  things  —  solid 
objects,  visible  and  tangible  ?  Probably 
not.  Her  whole  behavior  showed  that  she 
had  never  blended  the  feel  of  a  thing  and 
the  look  of  a  thing  into  the  perception  of  the 
thing  itself.  If  her  body  was  touched  any- 
where, she  never  looked  toward  the  place  to 
see  what  touched  her.  When  she  groped  on 
her  tray,  she  seemed  to  be  merely  repeating 
motions  that  had  formerly  brought   sensa- 


122         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

tions,  not  seeking  for  things  that  she  sup^ 
posed  were  there ;  she  never  looked  for  them, 
nor  even  looked  at  them  as  she  held  them ; 
she  seemed  to  have  no  suspicion  that  the 
feeling  in  her  hand  was  due  to  a  visible  ob- 
ject there. 

Nor  could  she  well  have  had  any  idea  of 
an  object,  even  as  one  may  get  it  from  touch 
alone,  without  sight ;  for  she  did  not  feel 
over  the  things  she  held  —  she  was  con- 
scious only  of  the  part  that  touched  her. 
If  she  laid  hold  of  her  rattle  one  day  by  one 
part,  and  another  day  by  another,  she  could 
not  have  known  it  was  the  same  object,  ex- 
cept as  she  learned  a  little  about  it  in  fum- 
bling for  a  better  hold.  In  short,  the  things 
she  touched  and  held  can  hardly  have  been 
to  her  definite  objects,  but  only  disjointed 
touch  and  weight  sensations. 

With  no  more  material  than  this,  children 
born  blind  do  build  up  in  time  the  idea  of  a 
world  of  things  ;  but  seeing  children  have 
a  much  quicker  and  completer  way. 


OF    A    BABY  123 

Just  at  the  end  of  the  third  month  the 
baby  had  once  gazed  at  her  rattle  as  she 
held  it  in  her  hand ;  but  it  was  not  till  the 
second  week  of  the  fourth  month  that  she 
seemed  really  to  learn  that  when  she  felt  the 
familiar  touch  in  her  hand,  she  could  see 
something  by  looking.  Then  her  eyes  be- 
gan to  rest  on  things  while  she  picked  them 
up  ;  but  in  a  blank  and  passive  way  —  the 
eyes  looking  on  like  outsiders,  while  the  awk- 
ward little  hands  fumbled  just  as  they  would 
have  done  in  the  dark.  The  baby  seemed 
to  have  no  idea  that  what  she  saw  was  the 
same  thing  as  what  she  felt. 

There  was  about  a  fortnight  of  this.  Then, 
on  one  great  day,  when  three  weeks  of  the 
month  had  passed,  the  ba])y  looked  at  her 
mother's  hand,  held  up  before  her,  and  made 
fumbling  motions  toward  it,  keeping  her  eyes 
on  it,  till  her  hand  struck  it ;  then  took  hold 
of  it.  She  liad  formed  an  association  be- 
tween the  sight  of  an  ol)ject  and  the  groping 
movement  of  her  hand  toward  it. 


124        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

It  was  not  till  the  last  week  of  the  month 
that  she  put  out  her  hand  directly  to  the 
thing  she  wanted,  instead  of  clawing  vaguely 
toward  it ;  and  even  then  it  was  douhtf ully 
done.  Still,  it  was  real  grasping,  by  guid- 
ance of  the  eye.  She  was  coming  to  real- 
ize that  what  she  saw  was  one  with  what  she 
could  feel;  that  there  were  things,  which 
could  be  reached  for  and  got  hold  of.  That 
is,  the  sight-motor  series  and  the  touch-motor 
series  were  coalescing  at  last,  and  giving  the 
baby  a  world  of  objects.  She  had  an  im- 
mensity to  learn  as  to  their  form,  weight, 
distance,  and  all  that ;  but  she  had  the  key 
now  for  learning  it. 

The  discovery  of  the  new  quality  of  tan- 
gibility in  the  visible  world  must  have  been 
gradual,  however,  and  her  new  power  of 
grasping  hardly  more  at  first  than  a  blind 
use  of  association.  In  the  next  fortnight 
she  grasped  doul^tfully,  depending  only 
partly  on  sight  for  guidance.  She  would 
put  out  her  hand  uncertainly,  with  fingers 


OF    A    BABY  125 

spread,  not  ready  to  grasp,  and  it  was  only 
"when  they  touched  the  object  that  her  move- 
ment became  confident.  Sometimes  both  lit- 
tle hands  were  brought  cautiously  down  on 
either  side  of  the  thing  she  wished  to  get 
hold  of. 

In  this  fortnight  she  grasped  better  with 
the  mouth  than  with  the  hands,  and  was 
more  disposed  to  use  it.  She  brought  her 
mouth  to  the  nipple  easily  by  sight.  She 
dived  at  me  with  her  head  to  get  the  loose 
folds  of  my  bodice  into  her  mouth.  In  our 
arms,  she  would  attack  our  faces  with  a  sud- 
den dive  of  her  head  and  a  funny  doubling 
up  movement  of  her  body,  and  would  mouth 
them  over  with  satisfaction.  One  day,  as 
she  lay  on  her  back,  a  rubber  ring  fell  out 
of  her  mouth,  and  lay  encircling  her  nose, 
resting  on  its  bridge  and  on  the  upper  lip ; 
she  made  many  ejfforts  to  reach  it  with  her 
lips,  stretching  her  mouth  open  ridiculously, 
but  had  no  idea  of  using  tlie  little  hands, 
which  were  fluttering  wildly  in  helpless  sym- 
pathy. 


126         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

During  this  early  period  of  grasping,  the 
baby  was  far  from  appreciating  what  a  world 
of  delight  had  opened  to  her.  Her  great  in- 
terest all  the  fourth  month  and  on  into  the 
fifth  was  in  the  use  of  her  eyes,  in  those 
eager  surveys  of  things  that  I  have  spoken 
of;  and  absorbed  in  this,  she  had  uncon- 
sciously and  almost  mechanically  gathered 
together  the  associations  of  sight  and  feel- 
ing and  muscle  sense,  till  grasping  had  come 
about,  merely  as  a  more  efficient  way  of  get- 
ting: thino-s  into  the  mouth. 

Professor  Preyer  and  most  other  observ- 
ers have  tried  to  account  for  this  persistent 
drift  of  everything  to  the  baby's  mouth  by 
the  theory  of  taste  association :  the  baby's 
most  agreeable  experience  has  been  that  of 
tasting  milk,  and  so  he  connects  all  pleasure 
with  the  idea  of  getting  things  to  his  mouth. 
This  seems  to  me  quite  untenable.  An  as- 
sociation between  taste  and  the  feeling  of 
something  in  the  mouth  would  not  be  formed 
unless  the  two  occurred  together  quite  regu- 


OF    A    BABY  127 

larly ;  and  what  with  the  washing  out  of  a 
baby's  mouth  each  time  he  is  nursed,  and 
the  frequent  stumbHng  in  of  his  hands,  and 
later  the  deliberate  sucking  of  fists,  he  finds 
tasteless  objects  there  oftener  than  milk. 
Again,  it  is  not  the  movement  of  the  hands 
up  to  the  mouth  that  would  become  asso- 
ciated with  food,  but  rather  the  feeling  of 
being  laid  at  the  breast  (which  our  baby 
did  in  fact  associate  early  wath  food,  as  I 
have  related).  And  in  the  third  place,  there 
is  not  the  least  evidence  that  taste  is  the 
most  agreeable  experience  of  young  babies  ; 
on  the  contrary,  the  tests  go  to  show  that 
they  have  a  low  taste  sensibility. 

The  craving  of  hunger,  of  course,  is  an 
intense  feeling  in  babies,  and  its  satisfac- 
tion (rather  than  taste  pleasure)  is  greatly 
enjoyed  ;  but  except  just  at  the  hungry  mo- 
ment, they  pay  far  more  attention  to  look- 
ing, and  hearing,  and  feeling  than  to  eating. 
(Jur  baby,  after  the  first  edge  of  hunger  was 
off,  was  always  ready  to  desert  the  breast  to 


128        THE  BIOGRAPHY 

look  at  something  interesting.  She  would 
nurse  a  little,  then  throw  herself  back  on  her 
mother's  arm  to  smile  up  into  her  face.  She 
cried  quite  as  hard  over  being  obliged  to  lie 
down,  where  she  could  not  look  around  her, 
as  over  being  hungry  ;  and  getting  her  meal 
caused  no  such  marked  signs  of  pleasure  as 
light  and  motion,  the  bath,  and  the  free  use 
of  her  own  powers. 

Some  babies  are  hungrier  than  ours  was, 
and  some  are  like  her ;  but  I  think  close 
observation  would  show  all  alike  more  taken 
up  with  their  higher  powers  than  with  food. 
And  as  all  alike  put  everything  into  their 
mouths  when  they  first  learn  to  grasp,  we 
must  find  some  other  reason  for  the  act  than 
food  association. 

If  we  regard  it  as  an  exercise  of  the  sense 
of  touch,  in  what  is  at  the  time  the  main 
touch  organ,  we  have  an  activity  closely 
parallel  with  the  constant  interest  in  the  use 
of  sight  in  the  early  months.  Observers  have 
been  misled  by  failing  to  realize   that  the 


OF    A    BABY  129 

mouth,  not  the  hand,  is  the  primitive  touch 
organ.  The  baby  behaves  with  the  things 
in  his  mouth  as  if  he  was  interested  in  feel- 
ing them,  not  in  eating  them.  He  does  not 
try  to  swallow  them  (though  he  may  be  de- 
pended on  to  do  it  without  trying,  if  they 
are  small),  but  licks,  sucks,  mumbles  them 
about,  and  in  every  way  gets  the  utmost 
touch  sensation  out  of  them.  Preyer  saw  a 
look  of  pleasure  caused  by  sucking  a  pencil, 
before  the  baby  had  ever  tasted  food,  when 
he  could  not  have  had  the  least  taste  associ- 
ation with  the  feeling.  There  is  plenty  of 
evidence  that  the  act  of  sucking  (the  muscu- 
lar sensation  as  well  as  that  of  touch)  is  in 
itself  highly  agreeable  to  babies. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  great  and  active  in- 
terest, at  this  time,  in  studying  the  visible 
•world.  By  the  end  of  the  fourth  nw)nth  the 
baby  had  certainly  learned  the  look  of  many 
things,  and  was  well  aware  when  it  was  in 
any  way  changed.  In  a  strange  room  she 
would  renew  the  eager  and  surprised  staring 


130        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

about  which  had  nearly  ceased  in  familiar 
rooms  ;  and  if  one  of  us  appeared  in  a  bon- 
net she  would  look  with  curiosity  and  inter- 
est at  our  changed  aspect.  She  doubtless 
knew  us  all  apart  by  this  time,  though  she 
gave  no  clear  evidence  of  it,  except  in  the 
case  of  grandpa,  whom  she  often  greeted 
with  cries  of  joy  and  flying  hands. 

From  the  middle  of  the  fourth  month  she 
followed  us  constantly  with  her  eyes  as  we 
moved  about.  Her  eyes  were  thus  drawn  to 
greater  distances,  and  her  range  of  vision  in- 
creased ;  before  this  she  had  hardly  noticed 
anything  across  the  room.  In  the  latter 
part  of  the  month  she  looked  with  especial 
curiosity  at  people's  faces  on  the  other  side 
of  the  room,  and  I  guessed  that  it  was  be- 
cause they  looked  so  much  smaller  to  her  — 
as  they  would  to  us  if  we  had  not  learned  to 
allow  for  the  distance.  A  face  fifteen  feet 
away  can  be  completely  hidden  by  a  fifty  cent 
piece  held  out  at  arm's  length  ;  our  friends 
shrink  to  small  dolls  in  our  eyes  every  time 


OF    A    BABY  131 

they  cross  the  room,  but  we  bring  them  up 
to  their  real  size  by  trained  imagination. 
The  baby,  who  had  not  yet  the  trained  im- 
agination, must  have  seen  strange  shrink- 
ings  and  swellings  as  people  moved  from  her 
or  toward  her,  and  as  she  was  carried  about 
the  room. 

She  saw  a  complete  change  of  appearance, 
too,  each  time  any  one  turned  around,  and 
each  time  she  was  carried  from  one  side  to 
another  of  a  person,  or  of  a  piece  of  furni- 
ture. We  have  become  so  used  to  this  that 
we  do  not  notice  it ;  but  to  the  baby  each 
side  of  an  object  must  have  looked  like  an 
entirely  new  thing.  I  think  it  was  some 
time  before  she  learned  to  associate  together 
the  difPerent  sides  and  the  different  sizes  of 
each  object  —  all  the  aspects  one  chair  could 
take,  for  instance,  gathering  into  one  group 
in  her  mind,  and  all  the  aspects  a  table  or 
a  person  could  take,  into  another  ;  but  she 
was  learning.  It  was  an  enormous  })iece  of 
work  for  the  baby  brain,  but  babies  are  not 
lazy,  and  she  enjoyed  it. 


132         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

The  changes  that  people  went  through,  as 
they  moved  about,  were  much  more  compli- 
cated than  those  of  the  furniture ;  but  that 
only  made  them  the  more  interesting.  No 
wonder  that  as  soon  as  the  baby  knew  she 
could  touch  and  feel  what  she  saw,  it  was 
our  faces  she  dived  for  with  especial  zeal,  to 
explore  their  surfaces  with  her  mouth  ;  and 
a  fortunate  thing  it  is  for  the  baby's  progress 
in  knowledge  that  mothers  do  not  mind  hav- 
ing great  and  moist  liberties  taken  with  their 
faces.  Our  baby  learned,  too,  at  this  time, 
with  the  connivance  of  her  grandfather,  and 
afterward  her  father,  to  fix  her  fingers  in 
their  beards  and  tug.  This  was  doubtless 
educational,  and  it  brought  still  another  in- 
terest into  the  number  that  gathered  about 
the  faces  of  her  fellow  beings :  but  it  led  to 
trouble  later,  as  her  hands  grew  quicker  and 
stronjrer  in  clutchins:. 

She  was  a  joyous  and  sociable  little  being 
in  those  days,  and  while  her  serious  business 
was  looking  about  and  studying  out  the  visi- 


OF    A    BABY^  133 

ble  world,  or  exploring  with  her  mouth  the 
feeling  of  things,  her  delight  was  as  always 
in  people's  faces  and  attentions.  She  had  be- 
come charmingly  responsive,  and  answered  to 
nods  and  prattle  and  cuddling  with  the  gay- 
est of  smiles  and  crows,  and  lively  flourish- 
ing of  arms  and  legs.  From  early  in  the 
month  she  acquired  an  ecstatic  little  chuckle, 
and  once  or  twice  even  broke  into  a  genuine 
laugh  when  she  was  played  with  a  little  more 
boisterously  than  usual. 

For  by  this  time,  and  more  and  more  every 
week,  she  began  to  like  a  frolic,  and  when 
she  was  tossed,  rolled  over,  or  slid  down 
one's  knee,  she  crowed  and  beamed  and 
chuckled  in  high  delight.  She  was  such  a 
tiny  baby  for  rough  play  that  we  tumbled 
her  about  most  gingerly,  but  she  seemed 
ready  for  anything  herself.  She  was  a  baby 
singularly  free  from  fear  or  nervous  excita- 
bility, showing  already  quite  clearly  the 
temperament  she  has  carried  through  her 
later  childhood. 


134         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

She  was  also  physically  strong,  and  once 
or  twice  in  the  fourth  month  sat  quite  alone 
on  some  one's  lap.  I  do  not  count  this  real 
sitting  alone,  however,  for  the  lap  gives  under 
the  baby's  weight,  and  steadies  her  a  little : 
one  should  not  record  sitting  alone  till  the 
baby  has  balanced  successfully  on  a  hard 
level,  the  floor  or  table.  But  as  far  as 
strength  of  back  was  concerned,  our  baby 
was  now  evidently  ready  to  sit  alone. 

At  this  stage  the  babies  of  grandpa's  line 
have  always  been  seated  on  the  floor  in  a 
horse-collar,  as  befitted  farm  babies ;  and 
this  latest  one  went  into  the  collar  at  four 
months  old,  like  the  rest  of  us  in  our  day, 
and  spent  much  of  her  fifth  month  sitting 
there,  sucking  or  brandishing  her  rattle,  and 
looking  happily  about  her.  It  is  really  a 
comfortable  seat  for  a  baby  not  yet  quite 
ready  to  sit  alone.  When  the  collar  is  not 
brand  new,  one  will  of  course  scrub  and  dis- 
infect it ;  and  it  is  the  better  in  any  case  for 
a  blanket  or  thick   shawl  thrown  over   it. 


OF    A    BABY  135 

Also  o£  course,  one  will  never  set  a  baby  on 
the  floor  without  seeing  that  all  possible 
drafts,  under  doors  or  about  loose  window 
casings,  are  shut  off  with  shawls  and  screens. 
Otherwise,  there  may  be  pneumonia  to  fight. 

I  have  just  spoken  of  the  baby's  boldness. 
She  showed  fear  now  and  then,  however. 
About  the  middle  of  the  fourth  month  she 
cried  while  a  caller  was  present,  dressed  in 
black,  with  a  large  hat.  Ten  days  later  she 
was  quite  upset  when  her  father  leaned  over 
suddenly,  bringing  his  face  into  view  from 
one  side.  Here  were  the  first  eye  fears, 
considerably  later  than  ear  fears. 

A  still  more  advanced  form  of  fear  ap- 
peared two  days  later.  The  baby  had  waked 
and  cried  alone  in  the  dark  for  some  minutes, 
and  when  she  was  at  last  taken  up,  she  had 
evidently  become  frightened,  and  was  not 
easily  reassured  ;  she  kept  leaning  toward 
her  mother,  and  uttering  troubled  cries,  and 
as  it  was  some  minutes  before  her  mother 
took  her,  she  grew  more  and  more  disturbed, 


136        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

and  finally  broke  into  a  wail,  and  was  soothed 
with  difficulty,  and  all  the  evening  she  was 
anxious  and  easily  upset.  The  next  night, 
waking  alone  at  the  same  hour,  she  began 
again  to  cry  with  the  note  of  fright. 

Here  was  not  yet  fear  in  the  sense  of  defi- 
nite expectation  of  harm.  It  was  still  purely 
instinctive,  a  sort  of  vague  panic,  from  a 
sense  of  unfamiliarity.  The  darkness  no 
doubt  contributed  to  this  unfamiliarity,  but 
I  do  not  think  there  was  yet  anything  that 
could  be  called  fear  of  the  dark.  It  is  doubt- 
less, however,  in  large  part  from  such  experi- 
ences that  fear  of  the  dark  is  born  ;  each  one 
leaves  its  trace  in  the  nervous  system,  and 
associations  of  terror  with  darkness  and  soh- 
tude  are  quickly  formed.  In  these  days  of 
leaving  babies  to  wail  themselves  to  sleep  for 
the  good  of  their  souls,  and  the  convenience 
of  mamma's  going  out  evenings,  innumerable 
such  associations  must  be  bred  —  and  again 
the  schoolbooks  take  the  blame  when  in  later 
days  the  child  proves  nervous  and  excitable. 


OF    A    BABY  137 

During  the  latter  part  of  the  fourth  month, 
the  baby  was  greatly  interested  in  making 
sounds,  and  the  one  that  most  delighted  her 
was  a  sort  of  harsh  cawing  or  croaking, 
made  deep  in  the  throat,  on  the  vowel  a. 
She  would  he  and  utter  this  sound  at  inter- 
vals, by  the  half  hour,  with  deep  satisfaction. 
But  when  she  had  not  been  making  it  for 
some  hours,  she  was  apt  to  forget  just  how, 
and  to  get  it  too  high  or  low  in  the  throat, 
producing  an  extraordinary  collection  of 
squeaks  and  grunts.  She  usually  hit  it  at 
last ;  but  after  repeated  losings,  it  became 
quite  dissolved  away  among  the  many  new 
ones  it  had  apparently  given  rise  to. 

Later,  she  took  much  pains  over  some  im- 
perfect lip  sounds;  she  would  he  looking 
earnestly  at  me,  draw  her  breath,  gather  her 
lips  into  shape,  and  finally  explode  the  sound 
with  a  great  expenditure  of  breath. 

She  made  her  little  sounds  often  with  an 
air  of  friendly  response  when  we  prattled  to 
her,  giving  back  murmurs,  croaks,  and  gui*- 


138         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

gles  for  words.  From  the  latter  part  of  the 
fourth  month,  if  we  miitated  to  her  some  of 
these  sounds,  she  seemed  to  imitate  them 
back.  Preyer,  who  records  the  same  thing 
of  his  boy  at  the  same  age,  thinks  it  marks 
a  most  important  epoch,  the  beginning  of 
action  guided  by  ideas  ;  but  Baklwin,  who 
considers  the  beginning  of  imitation  even 
more  important  than  Preyer  does,  thinks  it 
cannot  be  so  early,  and  that  the  repeating 
of  the  sounds  must  be  mere  coincidence. 

This  is  likely  enough,  for  a  baby  is  always 
repeating  his  pet  sounds,  and  it  is  not  safe 
to  conclude  that  he  means  to  imitate  us,  even 
if  he  does  chance  to  give  back  the  same 
sound  after  us  several  times.  But  as  to  ac- 
tion guided  by  ideas,  we  scarcely  need  wait 
for  the  first  imitation  to  see  that.  It  appears 
in  a  simple  form  when  the  baby  first  looks 
for  an  object  out  of  sight.  This  our  baby 
had  done  weeks  before,  and  by  this  time 
many  of  her  actions  seemed  to  be  of  ideo- 
motor  type.     The  effort  to  recall  her  croak 


OF    A    BABY  139 

was  an  instance.  In  the  early  weeks  of  the 
fifth  month,  she  would  seem  to  think  sud- 
denly of  one  of  her  little  sounds,  and  dash 
at  it,  bringing  it  out  with  a  comical  dou- 
bling up  of  her  body.  In  the  same  way  she 
would  have  the  happy  thought,  "  Fingers 
in  mouth  !  "  and  up  they  would  come  with  a 
jerk,  her  head  diving  forward  to  meet  them. 

In  the  nineteenth  week,  she  seemed  to  act 
once  from  something  hke  a  definite  memory. 
Her  grandfather  entered  the  room  while  she 
was  in  her  bath,  and  her  usual  joyous  up 
and  down  movement  of  arms  at  sight  of  him 
produced  a  novel  and  fascinating  splashing. 
Next  day  the  baby  splashed  without  sugges- 
tion, and  again  the  next,  looking  up  to  my 
face  and  smiling;  and  after  that  no  one 
could  teach  her  anything  about  splashing. 
Yet  even  this  was  probably  not  really  mem- 
ory, but  an  association  formed  by  a  single 
vivid  occurrence. 

During  these  weeks  a  note  of  real  desire, 
unheard  before,  appeared  in  her  voice.     Her 


140        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

face  had  at  times,  -when  she  saw  something 
new,  or  when  she  gazed  at  us  while  we  talked 
to  her,  an  expression  of  inquiry  and  effort  to 
comprehend,  with  lips  drawn  in  and  brow 
tense.  No  one  could  watch  her  and  not  see 
the  beginnings  of  some  sort  of  mental  life. 


OF    A    BABY  141 


VIII 

THE  ERA  OF  HANDLING  THINGS 

She  sprang  into  this  era  suddenly,  within 
four  days.  It  was  not  infrequently  thus, 
and  perhaps  more  and  more  as  the  Uttle  brain 
grew  complex.  Some  power  that  had  been 
slowly  developing  would  leap  up  into  comple- 
tion, unlocking  a  dozen  other  doors  of  men- 
tal life.  To  put  it  physiologically,  some  one 
new  connection  established  between  brain 
cells  would  bring  a  whole  network  of  others 
into  cooperation  —  the  more  easily  as  ances- 
tral nerve  paths  seemed  often  to  open  up  at 
a  touch. 

When  the  baby  had  passed  ten  days  of 
her  fifth  month,  she  was  still  grasping  half 
mechanically.  On  the  eleventh  day,  lying 
on  her  back,  she  held  her  rattle  above  her 
and  looked  at  it  carefuUy.     Her   attention 


142         THE    BIOGEAPIIY 

had  turned  to  the  things  that  she  grasped. 
She  had  come  before  to  the  perception  of  a 
■workl  of  objects,  but  apparently  only  now  to 
the  reaUzation  of  it.  And  thereupon,  that 
very  day,  I  saw  that  she  was  no  longer  using 
eyes  and  hands  merely  as  means  of  getting 
mouth  sensations  ;  she  was  holding  objects, 
looking  at  them,  and  pulling  them  about, 
for  some  moments,  before  they  went  to  her 
mouth. 

The  pleasure  of  this  handhng  seemed  to 
be  in  the  free  movement  of  the  objects  (seen 
and  felt  at  the  same  time),  not  especially  in 
the  touch  sensations.  When  this  new  plea- 
sure was  exhausted,  things  went  to  the  mouth 
as  before  for  the  enjoyment  of  touch.  It 
was  long  before  the  fingers  rivaled  the  lips 
in  pure  aesthetic  touch  enjoyment ;  perhaps 
they  never  do,  else  the  dandy  would  finger 
his  cane  knob,  instead  of  mouthing  it,  girls 
would  smooth  rose-leaves  across  their  finger 
tips,  not  their  lips,  and  a  kiss  would  have 
no  higher  rank  than   a   hand   clasp.     But 


OF    A    BABY  143 

for  grasping  pm-poses  the  supremacy  now 
passed  promptly  over  to  the  hands,  and  from 
this  week  the  habit  of  grasping  with  the 
mouth  by  head  movements  decHned  and 
disappeared. 

In  a  few  hours  the  baby  was  reaching  for 
everything  near  her,  and  in  three  days  more 
her  desire  to  lay  hold  on  things  was  the 
dominant  motive  of  her  life.  Her  grasping 
was  still  oftener  ^4th  both  hands  than  one, 
and  was  somewhat  slow,  but  always  accurate. 
Some  babies  learn  to  grasp  more  suddenly 
than  she  did,  and  often  miss  their  aim ;  but 
with  her  cautious  method  of  bringing  down 
her  hands  toward  an  object  from  either  side, 
penning  it  in  between,  she  could  hardly  make 
errors.  Tlie  tiling  once  corralled,  she  would 
pull  it  around,  perhaps  a  minute,  then  put  it 
to  her  mouth. 

It  is  an  epoch  of  tremendous  importance 
when  the  baby  first,  with  real  attention, 
brings  sight  and  touch  and  muscle  feeling 
to  bear  together  on  an  object.     "  In  a  very 


144        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

deep  sense,"  says  John  Fiske,  "  all  human 
science  is  but  the  increment  of  the  power  of 
the  eye,  and  all  human  art  is  the  increment 
of  the  power  of  the  hand.  Vision  and  ma- 
nipulation —  these  in  their  countless  indirect 
and  transfigured  forms  are  the  two  cooperat- 
ing factors  in  all  intellectual  progress." 
And  the  first  great  result  of  this  cooperation 
is  the  completion  of  vision  itself.  It  cannot 
be  doubted  that  it  is  mainly  by  studying 
objects  with  eye  and  hand  together  that  we 
get  our  ability  to  see  sohd  form.  A  colt 
grasping  his  ear  of  corn  with  his  teeth,  even 
a  puppy  hcking  and  turning  his  bone  all 
over,  or  a  kitten  tapping  a  spool  to  and  fro 
and  hugging  it  in  her  paws,  without  losing 
sight  of  it  —  none  of  these  can  bring  the 
united  powers  of  three  senses  to  bear  on  an 
object  so  perfectly  as  a  monkey  or  human 
baby  can,  holding  it  in  the  most  convenient 
positions,  turning  it  this  way  and  that,  see- 
ing every  part,  feehng  it  with  finger  tips 
and  mouth ;  and  it  is  doubtful  if  the  quad- 


OF    A    BABY  145 

rupeds  ever  attain  to  as  clear  a  sense  of  form 
as  we  do. 

In  these  first  days  of  the  passion  for  grasp- 
ing at  things,  the  baby  reached  for  flat  fig- 
ures as  readily  as  for  solid  objects ;  but  (to 
look  ahead  a  little)  she  learned  to  discrimi- 
nate with  surprising  ease,  and  after  the  first 
week  I  have  only  three  or  four  notes  of  her 
trying  to  pick  up  such  things  as  pictures  on 
a  page,  roses  on  a  quilt,  shadows  in  the  sun. 
Yet  I  do  not  think  this  was  because  she 
gained  quickly  any  such  sense  of  the  dif- 
ference between  plane  and  solid  form  as  we 
have,  but  rather  that  she  learned  quickly  to 
associate  a  certain  look  about  an  object  with 
the  experience  of  being  able  to  get  hold 
of  it. 

The  reason  that  I  think  so  is  that  even 
weeks  later,  when  she  was  six  months  old, 
she  showed  signs  of  having  no  real  ability  to 
judge  form  by  the  eye.  At  that  age  she 
turned  a  round  cracker  round  and  round  at 
her  hps,  trying  to  find  the  corner  to  bite,  as 


146         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

she  was  used  to  doing  with  square  ones. 
And  the  only  time  she  was  ever  taken  in  by 
a  flat  figure  afterward  was  when  (at  nine 
months  old)  she  tried  a  long  time  to  capture 
the  swaying  shadow  of  a  rope  end  on  the 
deck  of  a  yacht;  things  that  moved  could 
always  be  taken  hold  of  in  her  experience, 
and  she  went  solely  by  experience,  not  by 
any  general  ideas  of  form. 

But  such  general  ideas  really  require  a 
good  deal  of  development  of  reason  —  so 
much  that  it  is  likely  the  lower  animals  never 
rise  to  them.  We  must  think  of  the  baby's 
seeing,  therefore,  as  rounding  out  but  slowly 
to  full  equahty  with  ours  in  such  matters  as 
estunates  of  form,  distance,  and  size,  where 
much  experience  and  some  reason  are  re- 
quired. 

To  go  back  to  those  swift  four  days  in 
which  the  baby  came  into  realization  of  her 
power  of  using  hands  and  eyes  together,  — 
they  had  been  preceded  by  a  marked  advance 
in  the  use  of  eyes  alone  (or  jointly  with  the 


OF    A    BABY  147 

sense  of  motion  in  being  carried  about)  to 
get  the  relations  of  things  about  her  more 
clearly  arranged  in  her  mind.  The  day  be- 
fore the  baby  held  up  her  rattle  to  look  at, 
she  had  declined  to  go  to  sleep  in  her  mo- 
ther's arms,  and  kept  lifting  her  head  to  look 
at  me,  till  I  crossed  the  room  and  put  myself 
out  of  sight.  Presently  she  lifted  her  head 
again,  turned  round,  and  searched  persist- 
ently the  quarter  of  the  room  toward  which 
she  had  seen  me  disappear.  She  had  gained 
much  in  sense  of  direction  and  in  association 
of  ideas  when  she  could  look  along  the  line 
in  which  I  had  been  seen  to  move  moments 
before,  expecting  to  see  me  somewhere  there. 
Later,  the  same  day,  she  sat  in  my  lap, 
watching  Avith  an  intent  and  puzzled  face  the 
])Hck  and  side  of  her  grandmother's  head. 
Grandma  turned  from  her  knitting  and  chir- 
ruped to  her,  and  the  httle  one's  jaw  dropped 
and  her  eyebrows  went  up  with  an  expres- 
sion of  blank  surprise.  Presently  I  began  to 
swing  her  on  my  foot,  and  at  every  pause  in 


148        THE    BIOGKAPIIY 

the  swinging  she  would  sit  gazing  at  the 
puzzling  head  till  grandma  turned,  and  nod- 
ded or  cliirruped  to  her  ;  then  she  would 
turn  away  satisfied  and  want  more  swinging. 

Here  we  seem  to  get  a  glimpse  of  the  pro- 
cess I  have  spoken  of,  by  which  the  baby 
gradually  associates  together  the  front  and 
rear  and  side  aspects  of  a  person  or  thing,  till 
at  last  they  coalesce  together  in  his  mind  as 
all  one  object.  At  first  amazed  to  see  the  coil 
of  silver  hair  and  the  curve  of  cheek  turn 
suddenly  into  grandma's  front  face,  the  baby 
watched  for  the  repetition  of  the  miracle  till 
it  came  to  seem  natural,  and  the  two  aspects 
were  firmly  knit  together  in  her  mind. 

She  began,  too,  to  watch  people's  motions 
carefully  for  long  spaces  of  time — all  through 
the  process  of  setting  the  table,  for  instance 
—  with  a  serious  little  face,  and  an  atten- 
tion so  absorbed  that  it  was  hardly  possible 
to  divert  her  if  one  tried  (which  one  ought 
not  to  do,  for  power  of  attention  is  a  precious 
attainment,  and  people  have  no  business  to 


OF    A    BABY  149 

meddle  with  its  growth  for  their  own  amuse- 
ment). When  her  mother's  dark-eyed  sister 
had  a  httle  reception  in  consequence  of  hav- 
ing married  the  minister,  baby  was  in  the 
thick  of  it,  watching  first  the  preparations, 
and  then  the  comings  and  goings  of  people, 
with  the  closest  attention  and  the  deepest  en- 
joyment, cheerfully  ^vilHng  to  have  her  meals 
postponed,  her  nap  broken,  anything,  if  the 
fun  would  only  go  on. 

There  was  a  decided  advance,  too,  in  her 
acquaintance  with  her  own  body.  Sitting  as 
usual  in  her  horse-collar,  she  was  bending 
herself  back  over  it,  a  thing  that  she  had 
done  before;  but  to-day  she  kept  it  up  so 
persistently,  and  bent  herself  back  ^\ith  such 
exertion,  that  at  last  the  back  of  her  head 
touched  the  floor.  She  rig^hted  herself  Avith 
an  expression  of  great  sui-prise.  Evidently 
she  had  been  experimenting  in  new  muscular 
sensations  only,  and  (as  happens  to  all  experi- 
menters sometimes)  had  got  an  extra  result 
that  she  did  not   bargain  for  and    did  not 


150        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

understand.  She  bent  back  again,  with  her 
head  screwed  around  to  see  what  had  given 
her  the  touch.  In  this  position,  she  did  not 
reach  the  floor.  She  sat  up  again,  looked  at 
me  with  a  perplexed  face,  and  tried  it  over, 
a  f  idl  dozen  times,  till  her  mother  picked  her 
up  to  stop  it,  on  the  ground  that  the  baby 
was  more  valuable  than  the  experiment,  and 
that  she  would  break  her  little  back.  For 
days,  however,  the  baby  returned  to  the  in- 
vestigation, doubhng  herself  back  over  the 
arm  of  any  one  who  held  her  till  her  head 
hung  straight  down,  or  over  the  horse-collar 
till  it  rested  on  the  floor. 

We  may  perhaps  fairly  guess  that  in  this 
incident  she  had  for  the  first  time  discovered 
the  back  of  her  head  as  a  part  of  herself,  and 
any  of  us  might  well  be  surprised  to  find 
himself  extending  off  behind  into  space  that 
way,  if  he  had  never  known  about  it  before. 
The  baby  had  of  course  felt  daily  and  hourly 
touches  on  the  back  of  her  head,  from  pillow 
and  floor  and  lap,  from  cap  and  hair  brush ; 


OF    A    BABY  151 

but  all  her  previous  behavior,  and  her  surprise 
now,  indicate  that  tliis  was  the  first  time  she 
had  externalized  these  touches  —  which  mi- 
pHes  also  the  first  tuue  she  had  felt  herself 
as  receiving  them. 

One  of  the  first  things  she  did  when  she 
began  grasping  zealously  was  to  seize  her 
own  toes,  and  she  bent  her  foot  forward  on 
the  ankle  to  bring  it  better  in  reach.  This 
may  have  been  a  purely  instinctive  cooperat- 
ing act  at  first,  but  it  helped  on  the  control 
of  feet  and  legs,  and  the  recognition  of  them 
as  parts  of  herself  —  the  more  as  they  were 
now  for  some  time  favorite  playthings  every 
time  the  baby  was  undressed. 

Another  significant  movement  the  next 
day,  also  brouglit  about  by  the  advance  in 
grasping,  was  the  first  attempt  to  scramble 
forward  as  she  lay  on  her  stomach,  to  get 
hold  of  something  —  a  futile  elTort,  but  the 
forerunner  of  creeping. 

These  days  of  rapid  unfolding  were  joy- 
ous days.     The  baby  laughed   aloud    more 


152        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

than  ever  before,  and  her  daily  froHcs  were 
as  necessary  to  her  as  her  meals,  and  were 
fretted  for  as  persistently  if  she  did  not  get 
them.  The  door  of  communion  with  fellow 
beings,  too,  was  trembling  on  its  hinges, 
ready  to  come  ajar.  The  httle  thing  began 
to  look  up  into  our  faces  as  if  for  sympathy 
in  pleasure  or  perplexity,  as  I  have  mentioned 
in  the  case  of  her  surprise  at  discovering  the 
back  of  her  head  ;  she  did  it  laughing  when 
she  splashed  in  the  bath,  and  with  smiles  of 
satisfaction  when  she  Hstened  to  the  piano. 
When  her  mother  held  out  her  arms  to  take 
her,  she  learned  to  put  forward  her  Httle 
hands  in  response ;  and  on  the  same  day  she 
took  up  the  instinctive  gesture  of  stretching 
out  her  arms  toward  an  object  in  desire  — 
always,  I  suspect  (records  are  wanting),  the 
next  gesture  after  turning  away  the  head. 
Neither  of  these  reaching  gestures  was  as 
yet  used  intentionally  to  convey  ideas,  but 
both  entered  later  into  genuine  sign  lan- 
guage. Both  seem  to  grow  naturally  out  of 
grasping  movements. 


OF    A    BABY  153 

In  the  baby's  absorption  in  grasping,  most 
of  her  Uttle  sounds  were  abandoned  ;  but  she 
ching  to  a  favorite  long  gurgle,  and  used  it 
■with  an  air  of  amiable  response  when  people 
talked  or  nodded  to  her,  often  kickmg  her 
legs  in  the  air  or  flinging  up  her  arms,  by 
way  of  emphasis.  Sometimes  she  would  look 
earnestly  into  your  face  and  address  you  with 
the  gurgle  in  all  seriousness.  Sometimes  it 
would  seem  to  occur  to  her  suddenly,  and 
she  would  burst  out  with  it,  with  an  impul- 
sive movement  of  body  and  Hmbs. 

In  a  few  days  she  had  become  a  different 
baby,  with  a  new  world  of  interests,  and  a 
wonderfully  more  varied  and  vivid  life.  Af- 
ter this,  she  went  on  smoothly  to  the  end  of 
the  fifth  month  (and  for  that  matter,  through 
the  sixth),  absorbed  in  looking,  feehng,  and 
handling,  reaching  this  way  and  that  to  lay 
hold  of  everything  she  saw,  and  improving 
steadily  in  skill.  A  small  steel  bell  given 
her  in  the  twenty-first  week  was  at  first 
pulled  and  shoved  about  on  the  table,  picked 


154        THE    BIOGEAPIIY 

up  with  two  fingers  or  more  as  might  chance, 
and  put  into  her  mouth  by  any  part  that 
came  handiest ;  but  in  three  or  four  days  it 
was  taken  up  properly  and  rung.  More  and 
more  all  the  tune  she  found  something  to 
do  with  thmgs  besides  putting  them  in  her 
mouth. 

She  hked  hard,  bright,  and  rattling  things 
best  to  handle,  and  preferred  metal  or  bone 
to  rubber.  One  can  hardly  think  of  a  thing 
less  useful  to  a  baby  educationally  at  this 
stage  than  soft,  colored  worsted  balls;  he 
needs  something  that  he  can  feel,  hard  and 
definite,  in  his  hand;  something  with  dis- 
tinctly unlike  sides  that  he  can  see  as  he  pulls 
and  shakes  it  about;  he  loves  ghtter,  but 
cares  little  for  color,  perhaps  does  not  yet 
see  it ;  and  any  dyes  and  worsted  shreds  that 
can  come  off  in  wet  httle  mouths  are  conclu- 
sive against  such  a  toy. 

On  the  other  hand,  bright  metal  objects 
are  apt  in  the  course  of  their  gyrations  to 
deal  bad  thumps  to  Httle  heads  and  noses ; 


OF    A    BABY     ,  155 

so  one  must  compromise  on  rubber  —  unin- 
teresting, but  safe  —  and  on  such  bone, 
metal  (perhaps  aluminum),  and  unpainted 
wooden  toys  as  can  be  trusted  to  give  only- 
very  mild  thumps,  such  as  a  baby  had  better 
take  now  and  then  rather  than  be  deprived 
of  all  really  interesting  toys. 

This  is  one  of  the  many  dilemmas  in  which 
the  baby  is  lucky  who  has  a  grandma,  or 
whose  mamma  can  spare  tune  to  associate 
with  him  a  great  deal ;  for  no  end  of  things 
can  be  trusted  in  the  Httle  hands,  that  ache 
for  everything  in  sight,  if  only  vigilant  fin- 
gers hover  close,  ready  to  ward  gently  off 
any  dangerous  movement.  Sitting  in  one's 
lap  at  the  table,  too,  the  baby  may  push  and 
pull  at  many  things  not  safe  for  him  to  lift ; 
or  he  may  be  allowed  to  handle  something 
safely  tethered  with  a  string.  Certainly  the 
wider  hberty  of  holding  and  handling  he  can 
by  any  device  be  allowed,  the  better;  the 
instinct  is  very  strong,  and  wholly  healthy, 
and  the  thwarting  of  normal  instincts  is  not 
good  for  any  one's  nerves  or  mind. 


156        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

In  sight,  important  changes  were  no  longer 
to  be  looked  for :  except  possibly  in  the  mat- 
ter of  color  sense,  the  baby's  seeing  had  now 
passed  through  all  the  stages  of  development, 
and  needed  only  practice  and  mental  growth 
to  become  as  perfect  as  it  would  ever  be. 
She  was  evidently  still  at  work  somewhat, 
especially  in  new  places,  in  reducing  confused 
appearances  to  order ;  but  so  much  of  this 
work  was  already  done  that  more  and  more 
she  could  sit  and  enjoy  the  varied  spectacle. 
More  than  once  she  spent  half  an  hour  gaz- 
ing thus  out  of  the  window  with  quiet  plea- 
sure. 

There  were  for  the  first  time  signs  that 
she  could  distinguish  between  the  sounds  of 
voices.  She  looked  and  listened  one  day  in 
the  middle  of  the  month,  as  if  she  noticed 
something  unusual,  when  I  was  hoarse  with 
a  cold.  Late  in  the  month,  as  I  read  to  her 
mother  while  she  nursed  the  baby,  singing 
softly  to  her  (a  frequent  custom),  the  baby 
suddenly  raised  her  head  and  looked  curi- 


OF  A    BABY  157 

ously  at  me,  evidently  for  the  first  time  dis- 
tinguishing the  two  voices  as  separate  sounds. 

Her  mother  and  grandmother  had  been 
saying  to  her  a  great  deal,  "  Papa  !  "  hoping 
to  hasten  her  understanding-  of  the  word. 
This  same  day  she  imitated  the  motion  of 
the  Hps,  and  seemed  to  find  the  feeling  very 
funny,  for  she  laughed,  and  laughed  when- 
ever she  heard  the  sound  explosively  uttered 
during  the  next  fortnight ;  she  stopped  in 
the  midst  of  crying  to  laugh  at  it.  Her 
amusement  had  not  the  faintest  connection 
with  the  meaning  of  the  word ;  indeed,  she 
chuckled  aloud  with  even  more  gayety  when 
I  ejaculated  "poo-poo!"  or  "boo-boo!" 
instead.  It  was  something  in  the  explosive 
labial  sound  that  struck  her  as  comical. 

In  this  beginning  of  discrimination  in  arti- 
culate sounds,  we  see  the  root  of  the  later 
understanding  of  speech.  But  it  was  by 
another  road  that  the  baby  now  began  to 
move  toward  human  communication  :  by  the 
way,  that  is,  of  signs  and  inarticulate  cries. 


158         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

One  day  when  she  was  four  and  a  half 
months  old,  she  raised  a  strange  little  clamor 
on  catching  sight  of  her  grandfather,  as  if 
on  purpose  to  call  his  attention,  and  was  satis- 
fied when  she  got  it ;  she  began  to  hold  out 
her  arms  of  her  own  accord,  instead  of  merely 
to  meet  ours,  held  out  to  her ;  and  in  the 
very  last  days  of  the  fifth  month  she  made  a 
sound  of  request  when  she  wished  to  be  taken, 
a  whimpering,  coaxing  sound,  leaning  and 
looking  toward  her  mother,  instead  of  the 
mere  fretting  sounds  of  desire,  addressed  to 
nobody,  which  she  had  made  for  weeks. 

When  I  have  spoken  before  of  the  baby's 
"  addressing  "  her  httle  noises  to  us,  I  have 
not  meant  that  there  was  really  anything  of 
language  in  them.  Some  expression  of  in- 
terest in  our  presence,  some  sort  of  social 
feeling,  there  must  have  been,  but  no  more 
than  in  her  kicking  up  her  feet  or  chuckhng 
at  our  attentions.  These  first  asking  sounds 
and  motions,  on  the  contrary,  were  begin- 
nings of  real  language  —  not  yet  of  human 


OF    A    BABY  159 

language,  but  of  such  as  the  baby  shares 
with  all  the  beasts  and  birds. 

A  sort  of  intellio'ence  shared  with  the 
beasts  and  bu-ds,  too,  appeared  in  these  same 
closing  days  of  the  fifth  month  —  what  may 
be  called  "  adaptive  intelligence,"  the  use  of 
means  to  an  end  —  in  the  patient  devices  by 
which  the  baby  manoeuvred  her  toe  into  her 
mouth ;  but  this  was  a  sort  of  anticipation 
of  a  development  that  belonged  really  to  the 
next  month,  and  so  I  shall  leave  the  account 
of  it  to  the  next. 

The  increasing  ownersliip  of  her  body  that 
this  toe  feat  showed  was  e\4dent  in  several 
other  ways.  The  baby's  sitting  up  grew  im- 
perceptibly firmer  and  more  independent  of 
support :  at  nineteen  weeks  old,  she  was  sit- 
ting alone  in  our  laps  a  quarter  of  a  minute 
at  a  time  ;  four  days  later,  a  minute  at  a 
time,  provided  she  did  nothing  to  upset  her- 
self, such  as  flourishing  her  arms,  or  reach- 
ing after  things ;  two  days  later  yet,  she 
balanced  successfully  for  a  few  seconds  on 


160         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

the  table  —  and  this  was  real  sitting  alone  at 
last,  for  on  the  table  there  could  be  no  least 
support  from  the  yielding  of  the  surface 
under  her.  All  babies  can  sit  alone  earlier 
on  the  lap  or  a  cushion  than  on  a  perfectly 
flat,  hard  surface. 

At  just  about  nineteen  weeks  old,  too,  the 
baby  began  to  roll  over  to  her  side  when  she 
was  laid  on  her  back  on  the  floor,  and  to 
squirm  and  bend  around  into  a  variety  of 
positions,  instead  of  lying  where  she  was  put. 

The  period  was  coming  to  an  end  in  which 
the  main  activity  of  development  was  in  the 
senses,  and  in  coming  through  the  coopera- 
tion of  the  senses  to  a  bodily  consciousness 
of  herself  in  a  world  of  objects,  of  distances, 
and  directions.  Now  the  baby  had  to  learn 
to  use  that  body,  and  explore  that  world. 
But  before  this  second  great  period  of  activ- 
ity fully  began,  there  was  a  transition  month, 
a  month  of  vigorous  practice  in  the  powers 
already  gained,  and  of  gathering  forces  for 
the  new  developments. 


OF    A    BABY  161 


IX 

THE    DAWN    OF    INTELLIGENCE 

Teee  sixth  month,  though  it  lay  between 
two  great  development  periods,  —  that  of 
learning  to  use  the  senses,  and  that  of  learn- 
ing to  carry  the  body,  —  was  not  in  itself  a 
period  of  suspended  development.  It  is  true 
that  its  progress,  being  more  purely  mental, 
could  not  be  so  continuously  traced  as  that 
which  came  before  and  after,  but  rather 
cropped  up  to  the  surface  every  now  and 
then  in  a  more  or  less  broken  way ;  still,  no 
doubt,  it  really  went  on  in  the  same  gradual 
method,  one  thread  and  another  knitting  to- 
gether into  the  fabric  of  new  powers. 

It  was  to  this  month,  as  I  said  in  closing 
the  last  chapter,  that  the  beginnings  of  adap- 
tive intelligence  belonged  j  and  this  alone 
marks  it  a  great  epoch. 


162        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  discussion  about 
the  use  of  the  words  "intelligence,"  "rea- 
son," "  instinct,"  "  judgment,"  "  inference," 
and  the  hke :  what  these  faculties  and  acts 
really  are,  how  they  come  about,  where  the 
line  is  to  be  drawn  between  their  manifesta- 
tions (in  the  minds  of  anmials  and  of  man, 
for  instance),  and  many  other  problems. 
But  I  tliink  that  all  agree  upon  recognizing 
two  types  of  action  that  come  under  the  dis- 
cussion :  one,  that  which  shows  merely  the 
abihty  to  adapt  means  to  ends,  to  use  one's 
own  wit  in  novel  circumstances ;  the  other, 
that  which  rests  on  the  higher,  abstract  rea- 
soning power,  such  as  is  hardly  possible  with- 
out carrying  on  a  train  of  thought  in  words. 
Whether  these  two  types  are  to  be  called 
intelligence  and  reason,  as  Professor  Lloyd 
Morgan  calls  them,  or  whether  both  come 
under  the  head  of  reason,  lower  and  higher, 
we  need  not  trouble  to  decide.  If  we  call 
them  adaptive  inteUigence  and  higher  or  ab« 
stract  reason,  we  are  safe  enough. 


OF    A    BABY  163 

Even  if  it  be  true  that  any  glimmer  of  the 
hioher  reason  penetrates  back  into  the  grades 
of  hf  e  below  the  attainment  of  speech,  it  must 
be  only  into  those  just  below,  and  is  not  to 
be  looked  for  in  our  baby  for  a  long  time 
yet.  But  the  mere  practical  inteUigence  that 
I  am  now  speaking  of  seems  to  appear  in 
babies  close  on  the  completion  of  a  fair  mas- 
tery of  their  senses,  about  the  middle  of  the 
first  year,  and  it  goes  pretty  far  down  in  the 
animal  kingdom.  Darwin  thought  the  low- 
est example  of  it  he  knew  was  in  the  crab, 
who  would  remove  shells  that  were  thrown 
near  the  mouth  of  his  burrow,  apparently 
realizuig  that  they  might  fall  in. 

Recent  psychologists  have  shown  strong 
reason  for  thinking  that  such  acts  as  this  are 
at  bottom  only  the  same  old  hit  and  miss 
trick  that  we  have  seen  from  the  first,  of 
repeating  lucky  movements  ;  only  in  a  higher 
stage,  as  the  associations  that  guide  the  move- 
ments become  more  dehcate  and  comphcated, 
and  memory  and  imagination  enter  in.    How- 


164         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

ever  this  may  be  as  a  matter  of  theoretic 
analysis,  there  is  in  practice  a  clear  test  of 
difference  between  the  unintelUgent  earlier 
type  of  actions  and  those  that  all  agree  in 
calling  inteUigent :  I  have  indicated  it  above, 
in  saying  that  in  intelligent  action  one's  own 
wit  must  be  used  "  in  novel  circumstances." 
The  case  must  be  such  that  one  cannot  fall 
back  on  race  instinct  nor  on  his  own  previ- 
ous habit. 

Our  baby,  for  instance,  first  used  her  intel- 
lio-ence  to  steer  her  toe  into  her  mouth,  and 
the  way  she  did  it,  compared  with  the  way 
she  slowly  settled  on  the  proper  movements 
for  getting  her  rattle  into  her  mouth,  shows 
clearly  the  practical  difference  between  unin- 
telligent and  intelligent  action,  even  if  both 
are  at  bottom  made  of  the  same  psychological 
stuff. 

It  was  just  before  the  sixth  month  began 
that  the  baby  accomplished  this  feat,  but  it 
belongs  with  the  developments  of  that  month. 
She  was  already  fond  of  playing  with  her 


OF    A    BABY  165 

toes ;  and  sitting  unclad  that  evening  in  her 
mother's  lap,  she  first  tried  to  pull  them 
straight  to  her  mouth.  This  was,  of  course, 
the  mere  repetition  of  a  fi-equeut  movement, 
learned  by  simple  association.  But  when  it 
failed  —  for  the  toes  would  kick  away,  just 
as  her  arms  used  to  do,  carryuig  the  thumb 
from  her  hps  —  the  httle  one  put  her  mind 
on  corraUing  them.  She  took  them  in  one 
hand,  clasped  the  other  hand  about  her  in- 
step, and  so  brought  the  foot  safely  up. 
Still  it  escaped,  and  at  last  she  clasped  ankle 
and  heel  firmly,  one  ^vdth  each  hand,  and 
after  several  attempts  brought  the  elusive  toe 
triumpliantly  into  her  mouth.  It  is  true  that 
by  looking  up  to  us  for  sympathy  in  her  suc- 
cess, and  relaxing  attention,  she  promptly  lost 
it  once  more ;  but  she  recaptured  it,  and  from 
this  time  on,  for  weeks,  liad  immense  satis- 
faction in  it  every  time  she  was  undressed. 

There  may  have  been  a  certain  element 
of  instinct  in  this  —  getting  the  toe  to  the 
mouth  is  so  persistent  a  habit  mth  babies 


IGG         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

that  it  seems  as  if  there  must  be  some  inher- 
itance about  it  J  but  inheritance  could  hardly 
have  given  tlie  special  devices  for  managing 
the  insubordinate  foot ;  there  was  clearly 
some  use  of  individual  intelligence.  All 
through  the  process  of  learning  to  manage 
the  body,  the  baby  showed  instinct  and  in- 
telligence most  intricately  mingled  ;  and,  in- 
deed, we  do  so  ourselves  our  hves  long. 

Of  all  a  baby's  doings  this  toe  business  is 
the  one  that  people  find  it  most  impossible  to 
reirard  with  scientific  seriousness.  But  its 
indii'ect  usefulness  is  considerable.  The  co- 
operation of  different  parts  of  the  body  that 
it  teaches  is  remarkable ;  and  it  must  have 
great  influence  in  extending  the  sense  of  self 
to  the  legs  and  feet,  where  it  has  hitherto 
seemed  but  weakly  developed.  This  is  im- 
portant in  getting  the  body  ready  for  stand- 
ing and  walking. 

The  baby  now  showed  intelligence  in  her 
actions  in  several  little  ways,  such  as  tugging 
with  impatient  cries  at  her  mother's  dress 


OF    A    BABY  167 

when  she  wanted  her  dinner,  and  leaning 
over  to  pluck  at  the  carriage  blanket,  under 
which  her  mother  had  laid  some  flowers  to 
keep  them  from  her.  She  slipped  a  long- 
handled  spoon  farther  down  in  her  hand  to 
get  the  end  of  the  handle  into  her  mouth 
(almost  exactly  the  same  act  as  the  one  that 
Darwin  thought  first  showed  "  a  sort  of  prac- 
tical reflection  "  in  his  child  at  about  the 
same  age:  the  boy  slipped  his  hand  down 
his  father's  finger,  in  order  to  get  the  finger 
tip  into  his  mouth).  In  the  second  week  of 
the  month  she  began  to  watch  things  as  they 
fell,  and  then  to  throw  them  down  purposely, 
to  watch  them  falling. 

I  have  already  mentioned  certain  doubtful 
imitations  in  the  fourth  month,  and  a  clearer 
one  in  the  fifth.  Now  the  baby  began  to 
imitate  unmistakably.  Her  uncle  had  a 
fashion  of  slapping  his  hand  down  on  the 
table  by  way  of  a  salutation  to  her,  and  one 
day  (when  she  had  passed  a  week  of  her 
sixth  mouth)   she  slapped   down   her  little 


1G8         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

hand  in  return.  The  next  day  as  soon  as  her 
uncle  came  in,  she  began  to  slap  her  hand 
down,  watching  him,  delighted  to  repeat  the 
movement  back  and  forth,  as  long  as  he 
would  keep  it  up.  She  would  imitate  me 
also  when  I  did  it ;  and  in  the  course  of 
the  month  several  other  little  imitations 
occurred. 

I  have  already  spoken  of  the  great  impor- 
tance psychologists  attach  to  imitation.  Pro- 
fessor Baldwin  makes  it  the  great  principle 
of  development  in  child  and  race  —  all  evo- 
lution one  long  history  of  its  workings  ;  but 
he  uses  the  word  in  a  far  wider  sense  than 
the  ordinary  one,  tracing  "  imitation  "  from 
the  mechanical  repetition  of  Hfe-preserving 
motions  by  the  lowest  living  things,  up  to 
the  spiritual  ejffort  of  men  and  women  to 
Hve  up  to  their  own  highest  ideals.  Even 
using  the  word  in  its  ordinary  sense,  we 
know  what  a  potent  force  in  the  little  one's 
education  imitation  is.  The  age,  however, 
at  which  it  is  most  efficient  is  considerably 


OF    A    BABY  169 

later  than  the  sixth  month,  and  it  did  not 
count  for  much  yet  with  our  baby. 

Her  sounds  had  been  more  various  and 
expressive  from  the  first  days  of  the  month. 
She  had  taken  up  a  curious  puppy-hke  whine 
of  desire  or  complaint,  and  a  funny  httle 
ecstatic  sniffing  and  catching  her  breath,  to 
express  some  shades  of  dehght ;  and  she  had 
also  begun  to  pour  out  long,  varied  succes- 
sions of  babbling  sounds,  which  expressed 
content,  interest,  or  complaint  very  clearly. 
She  would  "  talk  to  "  any  interesting  object  (a 
hedge  in  gorgeous  bloom,  for  instance)  with 
this  expressive  babble,  sometimes  holding  out 
her  arms  to  it  at  the  same  time.  But  now, 
in  the  second  week  of  the  month,  the  day 
after  the  first  decisive  imitation,  a  surprising 
advance  beyond  these  means  of  communica- 
tion took  place. 

I  must  explain  that  the  wise  grandma,  who 
beheved  in  encouraging  babies  to  creep,  as 
the  best  possible  prei)aration  for  standing  and 
walking,  had  begun  to  set  the  little  one  on 


170        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

her  hands  and  knees  on  the  big  dining-table, 
putting  a  hand  against  her  feet  as  a  brace  in 
case  she  should  be  moved  to  struggle  for- 
ward. The  baby  had  a  habit  of  pushing 
with  her  feet  when  she  felt  anything  against 
her  soles ;  and  pushing  thus,  thrust  herself 
forward ;  and  as  the  table-cover  slid  with 
her  movement,  she  would  half  slide  with  it, 
half  shove  herself,  across  the  table,  grunting 
with  exertion,  and  highly  pleased. 

On  the  day  in  question  I  was  sitting  with 
her  by  this  table,  and  she  pulled  at  the  table- 
cover,  as  she  was  wont  to  pull  and  handle 
anything  she  could  reach.  Suddenly  she 
threw  herself  back  on  my  arm,  and  looked 
earnestly  in  my  face ;  sat  up  and  pulled  at 
the  cover  again,  then  threw  herself  back 
and  looked  at  me  again. 

"  What  does  she  want  ?  "  I  said,  surprised, 
and  hardly  able  to  think  that  the  little  thing 
could  really  be  trying  to  say  something  to 
me.  But  grandma  interpreted  easily,  and 
when  I  put  the  baby  on  the  table  accord- 


OF    A    BABY  171 

ingly,  to  make  her  sliding  sprawl  across  the 
surface,  she  was  satisfied. 

This  remarkable  advance  in  sign  language 
comes  well  under  our  definition  of  intelhgent 
action  :  it  was  not  a  stereotyped  sign,  already 
fixed  in  her  mind  in  association  with  a  certain 
wish,  like  holding  out  her  arms  to  be  taken, 
but  a  device  of  her  own,  to  meet  the  special 
occasion. 

Her  increased  power  of  communication 
was  not  the  only  way  in  which  her  mind 
showed  itself  more  wide  awake  to  other  peo- 
ple. A  rather  uncomfortable  phase  of  this 
development  was  timidity.  In  the  first  week 
of  the  month,  she  was  frightened  by  some 
one  who  came  in  suddenly  between  her  and 
her  mother,  in  a  strange  house,  and  spoke 
abruptly,  in  a  deep,  unfamiliar  voice  ;  and 
after  that  she  often  cried  or  became  uneasy 
when  strange  men  took  her,  or  came  near 
her,  especially  if  they  were  abrupt.  She 
drew  distinct  lines,  according  to  some  princi- 
ple of  her  own,  and  certain  people  were  alia- 


172        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

h\j  accepted  at  once,  while  others,  no  more 
terrific  that  we  could  see,  made  the  little  lip 
quiver  every  time  they  came  near.  This  tim- 
idity toward  people  was  not  at  all  deeply  fixed 
in  her  temperament,  and  though  it  lasted  all 
this  mouth,  it  was  never  very  marked  after- 
ward. 

Some  indications  of  the  dawn  of  affection 
also  appeared  now.  The  baby's  desire  to 
touch  our  faces  with  her  mouth  and  hands 
seemed  to  have  a  certain  element  of  attach- 
ment in  it.  The  touches  were  often  soft  and 
caressing,  and  they  were  bestowed  only  on 
her  especial  friends,  or  on  one  or  two  stran- 
gers that  she  had  taken  at  once  into  notable 
favor.  Once  she  leaned  out  of  her  baby 
carriage,  calling  and  reaching  to  me,  as  if 
she  wished  to  be  taken  ;  but  when  I  came  to 
her,  she  wanted  only  to  get  hold  of  me,  to 
put  her  hands  and  mouth  softly  on  my  face. 

Up  to  about  the  middle  of  the  month,  in 
spite  of  her  daily  exercises  with  her  toe,  the 
baby  had  not  altogether  annexed  her  legs  to 


OF    A    BABY  173 

her  conscious  self  and  brought  them  under 
her  orders.  She  still  had  to  hold  the  foot 
forcibly  with  her  hands  all  the  time  her  toe 
was  in  her  mouth,  or  it  would  have  kicked 
away  from  her  as  if  it  was  none  of  hers.  It 
is  likely,  too,  that  she  had  scarcely  any  idea 
of  those  parts  of  her  body  which  she  could 
not  see  and  did  not  often  touch.  Indeed, 
the  psychologists  tell  us  that  we  ourselves 
have  a  decidedly  inferior  bodily  conscious- 
ness in  such  parts  —  say  between  the  shoul- 
der blades.  Even  her  own  head  must  have 
been  mainly  unknown  territory  to  the  baby 
still,  in  spite  of  the  curiosity  she  had  felt 
about  it  the  month  before.  But  now  she 
discovered  by  a  chance  touch  that  she  could 
investigate  it  with  her  hands,  and  proceeded 
at  once  to  do  so,  with  a  serious  face. 

In  the  latter  half  of  the  month,  she  went 
a  good  deal  farther  toward  getting  a  roughly 
complete  knowledge  and  control  of  her  body. 
She  investigated  her  ear,  her  cheek,  and  tho 
back  and  sides  of  her  head,  from  time  to 


174        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

time.  She  became  quite  expert  in  using  legs 
and  hands,  head  and  mouth,  together,  in  get- 
ting hold  of  her  toe.  She  sat  alone  longer 
and  longer,  and  by  the  end  of  the  month 
coidd  have  done  so  by  the  half  hour,  if  she 
had  not  always  upset  herself  in  five  minutes 
or  so  by  turning  and  reaching  about.  She 
had  become  very  free  in  bending,  squirming, 
and  changing  her  position  when  she  lay  on 
the  floor,  and  early  in  the  third  week  of  the 
month  she  had  turned  clear  over,  from  back 
to  stomach,  in  reaching  after  something. 
She  followed  up  the  lesson  at  once,  and  soon 
was  rolling"  over  whenever  she  wished  —  at 
first  having  much  ado  to  get  her  arm  disen- 
tangled from  under  her,  but  managing  it 
nicely  before  long. 

It  is  possible  she  would  have  begun  creep- 
ing at  this  time  but  for  the  impediment  of 
her  clothes.  She  did  stumble  once  upon  al- 
most the  right  movement,  in  trying  to  get 
forward  to  something  she  wanted ;  but  her 
feet  and  knees   became   entangled   in   her 


OF    A  ^ABY  175 

skirts,  and  she  gave  it  up.  A  week  later, 
she  was  put  into  short  skirts,  but  by  that 
tinie  the  abihty  to  roll  over  had  diverted  her 
mind  from  creeping. 

Babies  must  lose  a  great  deal  of  their  nor- 
mal activity  through  clothes.  They  are 
retracing  a  stage  of  human  history  in  which 
clothes  had  no  part,  and  this  new  element 
must  hamper  the  repetition  immensely. 
Clothes  they  must  wear  —  they  do  not  live 
in  trojjic  forests  nor  own  hair  coverings ; 
but  we  ought  to  leave  the  httle  hmbs  as  free 
as  we  can  without  risk  from  cold.  A  chance 
to  r(jll  about  nude  in  a  room  that  is  safely 
warm  is  a  great  thing  for  a  baby. 

She  did  not  again  use  any  sign  language 
as  advanced  as  when  she  had  asked  to  be  put 
on  the  fcible ;  that  incident  was  a  sort  of 
herald  of  a  later  stiige  of  development.  But 
in  the  latter  i)art  of  the  month  her  regular 
means  of  communication  were  decidedly  bet- 
ter developed  than  in  the  first  part.  She 
would  coax  for  a  frolic  by  leaning  forward 


176        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

with  an  urgent  "  Oo  !  oo  !  "  and  expressive 
movements  of  her  body ;  but  i£  she  was  ask- 
ing instead  for  an  object  she  wished,  or  to  be 
taken  into  her  mother's  arms,  there  were 
small  but  quite  definite  differences  in  tone, 
expression,  and  movement,  so  that  we  usually 
knew  at  once  which  she  meant. 

About  a  week  before  the  end  of  the  month 
a  great  step  toward  intercommunication  by 
speech  took  place.  We  began  to  suspect 
that  the  baby  knew  her  own  name,  she  turned 
to  look  so  often  just  after  it  had  been  spoken. 
To  test  it  I  stood  behind  her,  and  in  an  ordi- 
nary tone  accosted  her  as  Bobby,  Tom,  Kit- 
ten, Mary,  Jacob,  Baby,  and  all  sorts  of  other 
names.  Whenever  I  said  Ruth,  Toodles,  or 
Toots,  she  turned  and  looked  expectantly  at 
me,  but  not  at  any  other  name.  Now,  Ruth 
is  our  baby's  proper  name  ;  so  it  was  evident 
that  she  really  did  have  some  inkling  of  the 
sound  that  meant  her. 

Not  that  she  could  rise  yet  to  any  such 
abstract  conception  as  that  of  a  person  or 


OF    A    BABY  177 

of  a  name.  But  she  had  learned  that  this 
sound  was  connected  with  interesting  experi- 
ences—  with  frolics,  and  caresses,  and  trips 
outdoors,  with  relief  from  discomforts,  with 
dinners,  and  all  the  other  things  that  hap- 
pened when  people  were  attending  to  her. 
It  was  out  of  such  a  beginning  as  this  that 
full  understanding  of  articulate  speech,  in  all 
its  logical  intricacy,  was  to  develop. 

One  of  the  most  marked  traits  of  the  latter 
weeks  of  this  month  was  the  surprising  rapid- 
ity with  which  things  were  grouping  them- 
selves in  the  baby's  mind  by  association,  in 
a  way  that  came  nearer  and  nearer  to  definite 
memory.  She  coaxed  for  a  spoon,  and  when 
she  got  it  was  still  discontented,  till  we  found 
that  she  wished  it  to  have  milk  in,  as  she 
knew  befitted  a  spoon —  though  for  the  milk 
itself  she  did  not  care  at  all.  She  understood 
•what  particular  frolic  was  to  be  expected  from . 
each  of  us.  She  turned,  when  she  saw  re- 
flections, to  look  for  the  real  object.  She 
made  demonstrations  of  joy  when  she  saw 


178         THE    BIOGEAPIIY 

her  baby  carriage,  knowing  well  what  it  por- 
tended. 

In  two  or  three  cases,  there  was  at  lust 
unmistakable  evidence  of  true  memory,  for 
at  least  a  few  minutes.  For  instance,  in  the 
last  week  of  the  month,  sitting  on  her 
mother's  lap,  the  baby  caught  sight  of  a 
knot  of  loops  that  adorned  the  centre  of  an 
ottoman  close  by,  and  reached  her  arms  for 
it.  By  way  of  a  joke  on  her,  her  mother  set 
her  on  the  ottoman.  It  was  quite  beyond 
the  baby's  sense  of  locality  to  divine  what 
had  become  of  the  knot,  and  she  looked  all 
about  her  diligently  to  find  it,  leaning  this 
way  and  that.  By  and  by  her  mother  took 
her  back  into  her  arms  to  nurse ;  but  all  the 
time  she  was  nursing,  she  would  stop  now 
and  then,  sit  up,  and  lean  over  to  look  for 
the  lost  knot. 

At  another  time,  when  her  mother  came 
into  the  room  with  a  new  hat  on,  she  reached 
out  her  hands  for  it  with  delight ;  her  mother 
retreated  at  once,  and  put  the  hat  safely  out 


OF    A    BABY  179 

of  sight,  but  when  some  minutes  later  the 
baby  saw  her  again,  her  first  look  was  at  the 
top  of  her  head,  and  seeing  it  now  bare  of 
lace  and  buttercups,  she  broke  into  a  disap- 
pointed whimper. 

All  this  time  practice  in  her  earlier  attain- 
ments went  vigorously  on.  She  was  watch- 
ing, handling,  reaching  after  things,  all  day 
long.  Especially  she  watched  all  the  move- 
ments of  people ;  often,  now,  as  they  went 
in  and  out  of  doors,  as  they  were  seen 
through  windows,  came  into  sight  or  disap- 
peared around  corners.  She  must  have  been 
getting  thus  some  idea  of  the  way  walls  acted 
in  shutting  out  her  view,  and  of  the  relation 
of  visible  and  invisible  positions. 

She  had  perhaps  more  troubles  in  this 
month  than  ever  before,  what  with  some  fear 
of  people,  and  the  discomforts  connected 
with  her  first  pair  of  teeth,  and  also  with  the 
beginning  of  the  weaning  period.  There 
were  a  number  of  days  when  her  health  and 
spirits  were  considerably  depressed,  and  there 


180        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

was  a  good  deal  of  fretting.  When  the  teeth 
were  fairly  through,  and  the  insufficient  food 
supplemented,  her  spirits  came  up  with  a 
bound,  and  she  was  more  joyous  than  ever. 

She  had  her  first  skin  pain  in  this  month 
—  a  scratched  finger  from  a  clasp  on  my 
shoulder  —  and  wailed  with  vigor ;  yet  it 
was  forgotten  in  a  few  moments,  and  never 
thought  of  again.  It  was  evident  that  skin 
sensitiveness  was  still  low,  and  that  hurts  left 
no  after  soreness. 

It  was  about  ten  days  before  the  end  of 
the  month  that  she  first  showed  a  decided 
emotional  dependence  on  her  mother.  She 
had  been  separated  from  her  for  some  time 
(by  a  tedious  dentist's  engagement),  had  be- 
come hungry  and  sleepy,  ard  had  been  fright- 
ened by  an  abrupt  stranger.  At  last  she  set- 
tled into  a  pitiful,  steady  crying  —  stopping 
at  every  angle  in  the  corridor  where  I  walked 
with  her,  and  watching  eagerly  till  it  was 
turned,  then  breaking  out  anew  when  her 
mother  did  not  prove  to  be  around  the  cor- 


OF    A    BABY  181 

ner.  This  tragic  experience  left  a  much 
deeper  mark  than  the  physical  woes,  and  for 
some  days  the  baby  watched  her  mother 
rather  anxiously,  as  if  she  feared  she  might 
lose  her  again  unless  she  kept  her  eyes  con- 
stantly upon  her. 

And  so  she  was  come  to  the  end  of  her 
first  half  year.  The  breathing  automaton 
had  become  an  eager  and  joyous  little  being, 
seeing:  and  hearing-  and  feeling  much  as  we 

o  o  o 

do,  knowing  her  own  body  somewhat,  and 
controlling  it  throughout  to  a  certain  extent, 
laughing  and  frolicking,  enjoying  the  vision 
of  the  world  vnih  a  delicious  zest,  clinging  to 
us  not  so  much  for  physical  protection  as  for 
human  companionship,  beginning  to  show  a 
glimmer  of  intelligence,  and  to  cross  over 
with  sign  and  sound  the  abyss  between  spirit 
and  spii'it. 


182        THE    BIOGRAPHY 


BEGINNINGS    OF   LOCOMOTION 

When  a  baby  has  learned  to  see  things 
clearly,  and  has  known  the  joys  of  handling 
them,  it  is  natural  that  he  should  soon  come 
to  feel  the  need  of  getting  to  them  when 
they  chance  to  lie  beyond  arm  reach.  Ap- 
parently the  first  impulse  to  move  the  whole 
body  does  always  come  from  this  desire  to 
get  at  something ;  but  I  doubt  if  this  re- 
mains a  very  important  motive  throughout 
the  whole  process  of  learning.  There  is  so 
much  in  that  process  that  is  instinctive  that 
the  baby  seems  to  be  in  great  part  taken  up 
and  carried  on  by  a  current  of  blind  impulse. 
Then,  too,  the  whole  structure  of  bone,  and 
joint,  and  muscle  is  so  fitted  to  certain  posi- 
tions and  movements  that  in  the  mere  chance 
exercising  of  his  Hmbs  he  is  steadily  brought 


OF   A   BABY  183 

nearer  to  the  great  race  acts  of  balance  and 
locomotion. 

One  might  suppose  that  with  babies 
sprawling,  creeping,  and  toddling  on  every 
hand,  we  should  not  lack  evidence  on  the 
beginnings  of  human  locomotion  ;  but  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  stage  that  precedes  walk- 
ing is  involved  in  a  good  deal  of  confusion. 
Records  are  scanty,  and  children  seem  to 
vary  a  good  deal  in  their  way  of  going  at  the 
tiling.  Most  of  them  "  creep  before  they 
gang  "  ;  but  there  seems  to  be  a  stage  before 
creeping,  when,  if  the  child  is  given  full  free- 
dom of  movement,  he  will  get  over  the  floor 
in  some  cruder  way,  rolhng,  hitching,  drag- 
ging himself  by  the  elbows,  humping  forward 
measure-worm  fashion,  or  wrifffflinff  along: 
hke  a  snake.  Perhaps,  as  I  have  already 
suggested,  this  is  because  skirts  delay  the 
natural  beginning  of  creeping,  and  these 
other  movements  require  less  freedom  of  the 
legs ;  perhaps  there  is  some  deeper  reason 
connected  with  race  history.     Sometimes  the 


184        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

baby  makes  these  less  efficient  movements 
answer  till  walking  is  acquired,  and  never 
creeps  at  all. 

Our  baby,  as  we  have  seen,  had  already 
made  her  first  ineffective  attempts  to  pull 
herself  forward  and  reach  something;  and 
lying  face  down,  unable  to  turn  over,  had  so 
propped  herself  with  hands  and  knees  that 
when  she  tried  to  move  she  almost  stumbled 
on  creeping  unawares.  But  soon  after  she 
was  six  months  old,  she  discovered  the  other 
half  of  the  trick  of  roUing  —  reversing  her- 
self from  front  to  rear  as  well  as  from  rear 
to  front ;  and  this  gave  her  such  an  enlarged 
freedom  that  it  stopped  all  aspirations  in  other 
directions. 

She  did  not  deliberately  turn  over  and 
over  to  get  anywhere.  She  simply  rolled 
and  kicked  about  the  floor,  turning  over 
when  she  felt  Hke  it  or  when  she  wished  to 
reach  something,  highly  content,  and  asking 
odds  of  nobody.  If  by  chance  she  turned 
in  the  same  direction  a  number  of  times  in 


OF    A    BABY  185 

succession,  slie  would  di-ift  halfway  across 
the  room,  meeting  no  end  of  interesting 
tilings  by  the  way  —  mamma's  shpper  tips, 
chair  rockers,  table  legs,  waste  basket,  petals 
dropped  from  the  vases,  and  so  on.  It  was 
a  great  enlargement  of  life,  and  kept  her 
happy  for  six  or  seven  weeks. 

During  this  time,  her  balance  in  sitting 
grew  secure,  so  that  she  could  sit  on  the 
floor  as  long  as  she  chose,  occupied  mth 
playthings ;  but  she  cared  more  for  the  roll- 
ing. 

It  was  in  these  weeks,  too,  that  two  great 
new  interests  came  into  our  baby's  life.  The 
first  was  a  really  passionate  one,  and  it  seized 
her  suddenly,  the  week  after  she  was  half  a 
year  old.  The  door  had  just  opened  to  ad- 
mit a  guest,  amid  a  bustle  of  welcome,  when 
a  cry  of  such  desire  as  we  had  never  heard 
from  our  baby  in  all  her  little  life  called  our 
attention  to  her.  Utterly  indifferent  to  the 
arrival  of  company  (she  who  had  always  loved 
a  stir  of  coming  and  going,  and  taken  more 


186        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

interest  in  people  than  in  anything  else !)  she 
was  leaning  and  looking  out  of  the  window 
at  the  dog,  as  if  she  had  never  seen  him  be- 
fore —  though  he  had  been  before  her  eyes 
all  her  life.  She  would  think  of  nothing 
else ;  the  guest,  expert  in  charming  babies, 
could  not  get  a  glance. 

Day  after  day,  for  weeks,  the  little  thing 
was  filled  with  excitement  at  sight  of  the 
shaggy  Muzhik,  moving  her  arms  and  body, 
and  crying  out  with  what  seemed  iutensest 
joy  and  longing.  When  he  came  near,  her 
excitement  increased,  and  she  reached  out 
and  caught  at  him;  her  face  lighted  with 
happiness  when  he  stood  close  by ;  she 
showed  not  the  least  fear  when  he  put  his 
rough  head  almost  in  her  face,  but  gazed 
earnestly  at  it ;  she  watched  for  him  at  the 
window,  or  from  her  baby  carriage.  No  per- 
son or  thincr  had  ever  interested  her  so  much. 
Muzhik,  on  his  part,  soon  learned  to  give  the 
snatchinjr  little  hands  a  wide  berth ;  and  his 
caution  may  have  enhanced  his  charm. 


OF    A    BABY  187 

Later  in  the  month,  she  showed  somewhat 
similar  excitement  at  sight  of  a  cow.  About 
the  same  time,  too,  she  first  noticed  the 
pigeons  as  they  flew  up  from  the  ground. 

This  was  the  beginning  of  a  lasting  inter- 
est in  animals,  animal  pictures,  animal  stories. 
It  is  not  easy  to  account  fully  for  this  inter- 
est, appearing  in  such  intense  degree,  at  so 
early  an  age.  All  children  show  it  to  some 
extent,  though  in  many  it  is  mingled  with  a 
good  deal  of  fear.  One  is  tempted  to  con- 
nect both  the  fear  and  the  interest  with  race 
history  —  the  intimate  association  of  primi- 
tive man  with  animals  ;  but  a  six-month  baby 
is  traversing  a  period  of  development  far 
earlier  than  that  of  the  primitive  hunter. 
Professor  Sully  has  some  good  suggestions 
about  the  sympathy  between  children  and 
animals,  but  these,  too,  fail  of  application  to 
a  baby  so  young.  Probably  to  her  the  main 
charm  was  the  movement,  the  rough  resem- 
blance to  people,  joined  with  so  many  differ- 
ences, now  first  noticed  with  the  interest  of 


188         THE    BIOGKAPIIY 

novelty  —  and  (as  later  incidents  made  me 
suspect)  the  quantity  of  convenient  hair  to 
be  pulled. 

The  other  new  interest  waked  late  in  the 
seventh  month:  that  joy  in  outdoors  that 
was  for  many  months  of  the  httle  one's  life 
her  best  happiness.  Up  to  this  time,  she  had 
Hked  to  be  taken  out  in  her  baby  carriage, 
but  mainly  for  the  motion.  Now,  one  morn- 
ing, grandma  took  her  and  sat  down  quietly 
on  the  veranda,  saying  that  she  wanted  her 
to  learn  to  love  the  sunshine,  the  birds  and 
flowers  and  trees,  without  needing  the  baby 
carriage  and  its  motion.  The  little  one  sat 
in  her  lap,  looking  about  with  murmurs  of 
delight;  and  after  that,  her  happiness  in 
rolling  about  freely  was  much  greater  when 
we  spread  a  blanket  on  veranda  or  lawn,  and 
laid  her  there.  Within  two  weeks,  she  would 
coax  to  be  taken  outdoors,  and  then  coax  till 
she  was  put  down  out  of  arms,  and  left  to 
her  own  happiness.  She  would  roll  about 
by  the  hour,  the  most  contented  baby  in  the 


OF    A    BABY  189 

world,  breaking  occasionally  into  cries  and 
movements  of  overflowing  joy. 

I  did  not  think  that  at  this  age  the  novel 
sio"hts  and  sounds  outdoors  had  much  to  do 

o 

with  her  pleasure ;  she  did  not  yet  notice 
them  much.  Nor  could  it  have  been  the 
wideness  and  freedom  of  outlook,  for  she 
had  not  yet  come  to  distant  seeing  —  a  hun- 
dred feet  was  as  far  as  I  had  ever  seen  her 
look.  Later,  all  this  counted ;  but  now  I 
thought  that  the  mere  physical  effect  of 
activity  in  the  fresh  air,  together  with  the 
bright  light,  and  perhaps  the  moving  and 
playing  of  lights  in  the  leaves,  must  make  up 
most  of  the  charm. 

In  the  early  weeks  of  the  seventh  month 
the  baby's  rollicking  spirits  were  striking  ;  in 
fact,  she  became  for  a  time  quite  a  little 
rowdy,  ho-ho-ing  and  laughing  in  loud,  rough 
tones,  snatching  this  way  and  that,  clutching 
at  our  hair  with  exultant  shouts  and  clamor. 
In  the  latter  part  of  the  month,  her  manners 
were  better  —  indeed,  it  was  fully  a  year 


190        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

before  I  saw  them  as  bad  again ;  but  she  was 
much  given  to  seizing  at  our  faces,  flinging 
herself  at  them  with  cries  and  growls  (ex- 
actly as  if  she  had  been  playing  bear),  and 
mouthing  and  lightly  biting  them.  And 
indeed  it  must  be  confessed  that  while  our 
baby's  behavior  was  often  very  pretty  for 
weeks  together,  she  had  many  fits  of  rough 
play  and  hoydenish  spirits,  and  our  faces  and 
hair  were  never  quite  safe  from  romping 
attacks  before  she  was  two  years  old.  This 
boisterousness  was  not  overflowing  spirits 
(real  joyousness  showed  itself  more  gently) 
and  I  could  never  trace  its  psychological  ori- 
gin. 

At  intervals  during  the  month,  she  con- 
tinued to  improve  her  bodily  knowledge  of 
herself,  investigating  her  head  and  face  and 
even  the  inside  of  her  mouth,  with  her  fin- 
gers ;  she  rubbed  her  forefinger  curiously 
with  her  thumb ;  she  ran  out  her  tongue 
and  moved  it  about,  trying  its  motions  and 
feeling  her  lips.     And  the  very  first  day  of 


OF    A    BABY  191 

the  month  there  had  appeared  that  curious 
behavior  that  we  call  "  archness  "  and  "  co- 
quetting "  in  a  baby  (though  anything  so 
grown  up  as  real  archness  or  coquetry  is 
impossible  at  this  age),  looking  and  smiling 
at  a  person  who  was  somewhat  strange,  but 
very  amusing,  to  her,  then  ducking  down 
her  head  when  he  spoke,  and  hiding  her  face 
on  her  mother's  shoulder.  Whatever  the 
real  reason  of  such  behavior  may  be,  there 
is  plainly  self-consciousness  in  it.  So,  too, 
when,  at  seven  months  old,  she  began  to  try 
deliberately  to  attract  the  interest  of  callers, 
wrinkling  up  her  nose  with  a  friendly  gri- 
mace till  they  paid  attention  to  her. 

Both  these  forms  of  self -consciousness  were 
common  after  this.  Neither  is  what  we  could 
call  human  or  rational  self-consciousness. 
Any  dog  or  kitten  will  show  them.  But  they 
certainly  are  something  more  than  mere  bod- 
ily feeling  of  self.  If  we  need  a  name  for 
it,  we  might  call  it  a  beginning  of  IntcIlUjent 
aelf-percejjtion,  as  distinguished  both  from 


192        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

bodily  self-feeling-,  and  rational  self-know- 
ledge —  in  which  the  mind,  years  later,  will 
say  to  itself  clearly,  "  This  is  /." 

We  now  began  to  suspect  (as  she  ended 
her  seventh  month)  that  the  baby  was  be- 
ginning to  connect  our  names  with  us ;  and 
when  we  tried  her  by  asking,  "  Where  is 
grandpa  ?  "  or  "  mamma  "  or  "  aunty,"  she 
really  did  look  at  the  right  one  often  enough 
to  raise  a  presumption  that  she  knew  what 
she  was  about.  The  association  of  name 
and  person  was  still  feeble  and  shaky,  but  it 
proved  to  be  real.  In  a  few  days  it  was  firm 
as  to  grandpa  (who  was  (luite  jyersona  gy^ata^ 
because  he  built  up  blocks  for  her  to  knock 
down,  and  carried  her  about  from  object  to 
object,  to  let  her  touch  and  examine) ;  and 
in  a  week  or  two  as  to  the  rest  of  us. 

Professor  Preyer  complains  of  teaching 
babies  mere  tricks,  which  have  no  real  rela- 
tion to  their  development ;  and  certainly  it 
is  a  sound  rule  that  self-unfolding,  not  teach- 
ing, is   the  way  in  which  a   baby  should 


OF  A    BABY  193 

develop  in  the  earliest  years.  But  Preyer's 
baby  learned  to  wave  his  hand,  and  play 
"  pataeake,"  and  show  "  How  big  is  baby  ?  " 
and  the  rest  of  it,  just  as  other  babies  do ; 
mammas  and  nurses  cannot  resist  it.  And 
as  long  as  the  babies  like  it,  I  do  not  see  that 
it  can  do  any  harm,  if  it  is  not  overdone. 
Besides,  it  may  be  said  that  these  standard 
tricks  are  all  closely  related  to  the  sign  lan- 
guage, and  so  fall  in  well  with  the  natural 
development  at  this  stage.  And  again,  the 
extreme  teachability  of  the  human  child  is 
his  great  superiority  over  the  brute  —  all 
our  civilization  rests  on  it ;  and  when  the 
time  comes  that  he  is  capable  of  receiving 
training,  it  may  be  as  well  that  his  power 
of  doing  so  should  be  used  a  little,  and  that 
these  simple  gesture  tricks  of  immemorial 
nursery  tradition  are  good  exercises  to  begin 
with.  It  is  possible  to  make  a  fetich  of  "  self- 
development,"  beyond  all  common  sense. 

At  all   events,  as   our   baby  approached 
seven  months  old,  her  mamma  had  besrun  to 


194         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

teach  her  to  wave  by-by.  For  a  couple  of 
weeks,  the  mother  would  hold  up  the  little 
hand  and  wave  it  at  the  departing  guest,  and 
before  long  the  baby  would  give  a  feeble 
waggle  or  two  after  her  mother  had  let  go  ; 
next,  she  would  need  only  to  be  started ; 
and  a  week  after  she  was  seven  months  old 
she  waved  a  spontaneous  farewell  as  I  left 
the  room.  There  was  a  long  history  of  the 
gesture  after  that,  for  it  was  lost  and  re- 
gained, confused  with  other  hand  tricks  and 
straightened  out,  and  altogether  played  a 
considerable  part  in  the  story  of  sign  lan- 
guage and  of  memory,  which  I  shall  not  have 
time  to  relate.  But  at  all  times  it  paid  for 
itself  in  the  delight  it  gave  the  baby  :  it  re- 
conciled her  to  almost  any  parting,  and  even 
to  going  to  bed. 

Her  objection  to  going  to  bed,  which  had 
been  evident  since  the  fifth  month,  was  be- 
cause she  thought  sleeping  was  a  waste  of 
good  playtime,  not  because  she  had  any  as- 
Bociations  of  fear  and  repugnance  connected 


OF    A    BABY  195 

with  it.  She  had  never  been  left  to  cry  her- 
self to  sleep  alone,  but  was  rocked  and  sung 
to  in  good  old  fashion.  But  she  did  show 
signs  at  this  time  of  timidity  and  distress  in 
waking  from  sleep,  clinging  piteously  to  her 
mother  and  crying.  She  had  waked  and 
cried  alone  a  number  of  times,  and,  as  I  have 
already  said,  she  seemed  to  have  formed  some 
associations  of  fear  in  this  way.  But  I  think 
there  were  deeper  reasons  for  the  confused 
distress  on  waking,  which  from  now  until 
half  way  through  the  third  year  appeared  at 
times. 

I  have  spoken  several  times  of  the  ease 
with  which  even  we  grown  people  lose  our 
sense  of  personal  identity  ;  and  changes  in 
brain  circulation  make  such  confusions  es- 
pecially likely  at  first  waking  from  sleep. 
With  babies,  whose  feeling  of  identity  is 
but  insecurely  established,  this  must  be  much 
more  common  ;  moreover,  a  baby's  condi- 
tions of  breathing  are  less  regular  than  ours, 
and  it  is  probable  that  as  he  comes  out  of 


196         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

sleep,  and  the  circulation  and  respiration  of 
the  waking  hours  slowly  reestablish  them- 
selves, he.has  all  sorts  of  queer,  lost  feelings. 
I  was  pretty  sure,  from  our  baby's  behavior 
in  the  next  two  years,  that  she  struggled 
back  to  the  firm  shores  of  waking  conscious- 
ness through  dark  waters  of  confusion,  and 
needed  a  friendly  hand  to  cling  to.  This,  I 
suspect,  is  the  secret  of  the  wild  crying  in 
the  night,  which  doctors  call  "  night  terror"  : 
it  is  not  terror,  I  think,  but  vague  distress, 
increased  by  the  darkness  —  loss  of  self,  of 
direction,  of  all  one's  usual  bodily  feeling. 

In  these  sensitive  states  attending  sleep  it 
is  likely  that  some  of  the  emotional  condi- 
tions for  life  are  formed,  and  the  ties  be- 
tween mother  and  child  knit  firmest.  My 
observation  is  that  the  one  the  baby  loves 
most  is  the  one  that  sleeps  close  by,  that 
bends  over  him  as  he  struggles  confusedly 
back  to  waking,  and  steers  him  tenderly 
through  the  valley  of  the  shadow  of  sleep ; 
and  next,  the  one  that  plays  most  patiently 


OF    A    BABY  197 

and  observantly  with   him — not   the   one 
that  feeds  him. 

In  her  absorption  in  her  growing  bodily 
activity,  the  baby  had  taken  no  marked  steps 
in  intellectual  development,  though  in  skill 
of  handling,  and  in  ability  to  understand 
what  went  on  about  her  and  put  two  and  two 
together,  she  made  steady  progress.  Early 
in  the  eiirhth  month,  some  definite  instances 
of  this  appeared.  She  showed  a  discreet 
preference  at  bedtime  for  anybody  rather 
than  her  mother,  and  clung  vigorously 
round  my  neck  or  her  grandfather's  when 
that  messenger  of  fate  came  for  her.  She 
dropped  things  to  watch  them  fall,  with  a 
persistent  zeal  and  interest  such  as  she  had 
not  shown  in  earlier  experiments  of  the  sort. 
She  knew  what  it  meant  if  one  of  us  put  a 
hat  on,  and  pleaded  with  outstretched  hands 
and  springing  motion  to  go  too.  Once  she 
found  that  in  moving  a  long  stick  she  was 
moving  some  twigs  at  its  farther  end,  and 
kept  up  the  experiment  with  curiosity. 


198        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

It  was  about  this  time  —  the  first  fortnight 
of  the  eighth  month — that  taste  first  became 
a  source  of  pleasure  to  our  baby.  She  had 
been  given  an  experimental  taste  of  several 
things  before,  but  beyond  the  grimace  of 
surprise  (it  looks  like  utmost  disgust,  but 
there  seems  no  doubt  that  it  really  means 
surprise  only)  with  which  little  babies  greet 
new  tastes,  she  had  shown  no  great  interest 
in  them.  Now,  as  nature's  supply  grew 
scant,  she  was  introduced  more  seriously  to 
several  supplementary  foods,  and  at  least 
once  rejoiced  over  the  taste  a  good  deal. 
Still,  she  was  apt  soon  to  tire  of  them,  and 
on  the  whole  taste  did  not  at  any  time  in 
her  first  year  take  a  large  place  among  her 
interests. 

As  the  middle  of  the  eighth  month  ap- 
proached, it  was  evident  that  an  advance  in 
power  of  movement  was  coming.  The  baby 
was  getting  up  on  hands  and  knees  again  ; 
she  made  daily  a  few  aimless  creeping  move- 
ments J  and  in  her  bath  she  would  draw  her- 


OF    A    BABY  199 

self  to  her  knees,  and  partly  to  her  feet,  hold- 
ing by  the  edge  of  the  tub,  and  somewhat 
supported  by  the  water.  A  few  days  later 
she  drew  herself  forward  a  few  inches,  flat 
on  her  stomach,  to  get  something.  But  she 
still  did  not  catch  the  idea  of  creeping,  and 
rolling  remained  her  great  pleasure  for  an- 
other fortnight. 

In  this  fortnight,  which  brought  our  baby 
to  eight  months  old,  the  rolling  grew  very 
rapid  and  free.  She  would  now  roll  over 
and  over  in  the  same  direction,  not  to  get 
any^vhere  in  particular  (she  never  learned  to 
use  rolling  for  that  purpose),  but  just  for 
fun.  She  varied  the  exercise  with  the  most 
lively  kicking  —  heels  raised  in  air  and 
brought  down  together  with  astonishing 
vio'or  and  zest ;  and  with  twisting  about  and 
getting  on  hands  and  knees,  or  even  on 
hands  and  feet,  prattling  joyously,  and  hav- 
ing a  beautiful  time  all  by  herself,  for  as 
long  as  the  authorities  would  leave  her  alone. 
I  have  no  note  or  memory  that  she  ever  tired 


200        THE   BIOGRAPHY 

of  it,  or  asked  for  attention  or  change ;  it 
was  always  some  one  else  who  interfered,  be- 
cause meal-time  or  nap-time  or  something 
had  "come. 

In  the  last  week  of  the  month  she  learned 
to  raise  herself  to  a  sitting  position  ;  and  as 
she  could  now  sit  up  or  lie  down  at  will,  she 
tumbled  about  the  floor  with  still  more  vari- 
ety and  enjoyment.  In  the  same  week  she 
began  to  pull  herself  daily  quite  to  her  feet 
in  the  tub.  It  was  an  ordinary  wooden  wash- 
tub  which  was  bridoinsf  the  interval  between 
her  own  outgrown  one  and  the  grown-up 
bath-tub ;  and  she  would  stand,  leaning  her 
weight  partly  on  her  hands,  on  the  edge  of 
the  tub,  with  her  feet  planted  wide  apart, 
quite  on  the  opposite  side,  giving  her  a  pretty 
secure  base. 

In  this  fortnight  the  baby's  understanding 
of  us  and  feeling  of  nearness  to  us  were 
noticeably  greater.  Her  attachment  to  her 
favorites  was  striking.  She  would  cling  to 
us  with  all  the  strength  of  her  little  arms, 


OF    A    BABY  201 

sometimes  pressing  her  lips  against  our  faces 
in  a  primitive  sort  of  kiss.  Her  desire  for 
our  attention  was  intense  —  little  arms 
stretched  out,  face  full  of  desire,  while  she 
uttered  urg-ent  cries.  Now  and  then  she 
was  entirely  unwilHng  to  eat  a  meal  till  the 
person  she  had  set  her  heart  on  at  the 
moment  had  yielded  to  her  pleading,  and 
come  to  sit  close  beside  her,  for  company. 

She  understood  one  or  two  httle  directions 
—  "by-by,"  and  "  patacake  "  ;  or,  at  least, 
associated  them  with  the  acts.  She  had  some 
idea  of  what  "  No,  no  !  "  meant,  and  she 
knew  perfectly  that  she  must  not  keep  paper 
or  flower  petals  in  her  mouth,  and  after 
biting  off  a  bit  would  put  out  her  tongue, 
laughing,  to  have  the  forbidden  scrap  re- 
moved. And  one  day  when  I  said  to  her, 
"  Don't  you  want  to  come  to  aunty  ?  "  with- 
out any  gesture,  she  surprised  me  by  leaning 
forward  and  putting  out  her  hands  to  me, 
exactly  as  if  I  liad  reached  my  arms  out  for 
her.     She  could    not  have  understood   the 


202        THE    BIOGEAPIIY 

whole  question,  for  she  hardly  understood 
words  at  all  at  the  time ;  but  she  must  have 
made  out  "come,"  and,  putting  it  with 
"  aunty,"  which  she  had  known  for  weeks, 
got  at  my  meaning. 

On  the  day  she  was  eight  months  old,  at 
last,  the  baby  half  sprawled,  half  crept,  for- 
ward to  get  something.  The  early,  aimless 
stages  of  locomotion  were  over,  and  she  was 
about  to  start  in  in  good  earnest  to  learn  to 
creep  and  to  stand. 


OF    A    BABY  203 


XI 

CREEPING   AKD    STANDING 

Now,  at  eight  months  old,  began  a  fort- 
night of  rapid  development  in  movements, 
all  branching  out  from  the  position  on  hands 
and  knees  which  the  baby  often  took  as  she 
sprawled  on  the  floor. 

First  she  hit  on  two  ways  of  sitting  up, 
besrinnins:  on  hands  and  knees.  One  of 
them,  in  fact,  had  appeared  in  the  last  days 
of  the  preceding  month.  She  would  tilt 
over  sidewise  till  she  was  half  sitting,  lean- 
ing on  one  hand,  then  straighten  up,  raising 
the  hand  —  and  there  you  are,  sitting.  The 
other  way,  a  few  days  later,  was  to  begin  as 
before  on  hands  and  knees,  separate  the 
knees,  and  lift  herself  over  backward  till  she 
was  sitting,  turning  the  legs  out  at  the  knee. 
No  grown  person  but  a  contortionist  couk' 


204        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

do  it,  for  our  hips  have  not  enough  play  in 
the  socket  to  carry  the  movement  through 
the  last  inch  or  two ;  but  babies'  joints  are 
flexible.  This  became  our  baby's  regular 
method,  and  the  position  it  left  her  in  — 
legs  spread  out  before  her,  bent  directly  out 
at  the  knee  —  was  her  every-day  one  for 
many  months.  Most  babies,  I  believe,  sit 
monkey  fashion  —  legs  straight,  with  soles 
turned  in. 

Watching  carefully,  we  were  sure  that  the 
baby  did  not  at  first  use  either  method  intel- 
ligently; she  wanted  to  sit  up,  and  shifted 
and  lifted  her  body,  scolding  with  impa- 
tience, and  never  knowing  whether  she  would 
bring  up  in  the  desired  position  or  not,  till 
she  found  herself  by  luck  where  she  wanted 
to  be.  In  a  few  days,  however,  the  right 
movements  were  sifted  out  from  the  useless 
ones,  and  she  sat  up  and  lay  down  at  will. 

In  the  same  early  days  of  the  ninth  month, 
another  movement  came  of  experimenting 
while  on  hands   and   knees  —  a   backward 


OF    A    BABY  205 

creeping,  pushing  -vvith  the  hands.  The 
baby  at  once  tried  to  utilize  it  to  get  to  peo- 
ple and  things,  and  it  was  funny  to  hear  her 
chattering  with  displeasure  as  she  found  her- 
self borne  off  the  other  way  —  backing  some- 
times into  the  wall,  and  pushing  helplessly 
against  it,  like  a  little  locomotive  that  had 
accidentally  got  reversed.  She  soon  gave 
up  trying  to  get  anywhere  by  this  "  craw- 
fishing," however,  and  then  she  enjoyed  it, 
merely  as  movement. 

The  only  reason  I  have  heard  suggested 
for  this  curious  back-action  creeping  (which 
is  not  uncommon  just  before  real  creeping) 
is  that  the  baby's  arms  are  stronger  than  the 
legs,  and  as  a  pushing  movement  with  them 
is  more  natural  than  a  stepping  one,  a  back- 
ward impulse  is  given,  which  the  baby,  as  a 
rule,  resents  with  comical  displeasure. 

Next,  from  hands  and  knees  the  baby 
learned  to  rise  to  hands  and  feet ;  to  kneel, 
and  then  to  sit  back  on  her  heels ;  and  to 
make  sundry  variations  on  these  positions, 


206         THE    BIOGEAPIIY 

such  as  kneeling  on  one  knee  and  one  foot, 
or  sitting  on  one  heel,  with  the  other  foot 
thrust  out  sidewise,  propping  her. 

In  spite  of  two  or  three  chance  forward 
steps,  she  was  eight  and  a  half  months  old 
before  she  hit  at  last  on  real  creeping ;  then 
one  day  I  saw  her  several  times  creep  for- 
ward a  foot  or  two,  and  presently  she  was 
rolling  an  orange  about  and  creeping  after 
it.  I  tried  in  vain  to  lure  her  more  than  a 
couple  of  feet,  to  come  to  me  or  to  get  a 
plaything;  she  would  creep  a  step  or  two, 
then  sit  back  on  her  heels  and  call  me  to 
take  her.  Until  almost  the  end  of  this 
month,  indeed,  she  would  creep  for  but  very 
short  distances,  and  always  to  reach  some- 
thing, not  for  pleasure  in  the  movement. 

But  while  she  fumbled  in  such  chance 
fashion  towards  creeping,  she  was  carried  on 
towards  standing  by  strong  and  evident  in- 
stinct. She  pulled  herself  up  daily,  not  to 
reach  anything,  but  from  an  overwhelming 
desire  to  get  to  her  feet ;  and  when  she  found 


OF    A    BABY  207 

herself  on  them  she  rejoiced  and  triumphed. 
At  this  stage  she  ahnost  invariably  used  a 
low  object  to  pull  up  by,  so  that  she  could 
lean  over  it,  propping  her  weight  with  her 
hands  —  or  with  one  hand,  as  she  grew  more 
confident.  It  was  after  the  middle  of  the 
month  that  she  first  drew  herself  up,  her 
knees  shaking,  by  a  chair,  to  reach  a  favor- 
ite plaything ;  but  thereafter  chairs  became 
her  great  "  stand  by,"  in  a  very  literal  sense. 
In  kneeling,  too,  she  showed  joy.  She 
could  not  keep  her  balance  on  her  knees  for 
more  than  a  few  seconds,  but  while  she  did 
she  exulted  in  the  exploit,  and  patted  and 
waved  her  hands  in  glee.  Aside  from  stand- 
ing and  kneeling,  her  advances  in  movement 
were  made  with  a  curious  lack  of  intellicrent 
consciousness  of  what  she  was  about,  as  well 
as  of  clear,  compelling  instinct.  She  seemed 
to  progress  by  blind  experimenting,  selecting 
gradually  out  of  a  medley  of  others  the  acts 
and  positions  that  were  most  useful  and  best 
fitted  to  the  structure  of  her  joints  and 
muscles. 


208        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

Many  babies  before  this  stage  show  the 
■walking  instinct  quite  clearly.  If  they  are 
held  from  above,  so  that  their  soles  press 
lightly  on  a  flat  surface,  the  legs  will  begin 
to  make  good  stepping  movements.  Our 
baby  had  failed  to  make  this  response  hith- 
erto ;  in  this  fortnight,  however,  it  appeared, 
very  imperfectly  and  irregularly,  but  steadily 
better;  and  with  another  week  she  took 
great  delight  in  the  exercise. 

Amid  all  these  new  movements,  rolling 
rapidly  declined  and  disappeared.  The  baby 
was  absorbed  in  her  new  powers,  and  during 
the  latter  half  of  the  month  her  joy  in  them 
was  exquisite.  She  was  a  thing  to  remember 
for  a  lifetime  as  she  played  on  a  quilt  spread 
on  the  lawn  in  the  hot  June  days  —  sitting 
and  looking  about  her  with  laughter  and 
ejaculations  of  pleasure,  gazing  up  with  won- 
der and  interest  at  the  branches  swaying  in 
the  warm  breeze,  watching  the  dog,  creeping 
about  and  examining  the  grass  with  grave 
attention,  pulling  to  her  feet  at  our  knees 


OF    A    BABY  209 

as  we  sat  by  with  our  reading  ana  sewing. 
And  when  we  let  her  take  the  benefit  of  the 
warm  weather,  and  creep  about  the  floor 
stripped  to  the  inmost  layer  of  garments, 
arms  and  legs  bare,  she  was  at  the  height  of 
joy.  She  would  go  from  one  position  to 
another,  sitting  and  kneeling,  tumbling  and 
scrambling  and  creeping  about  in  endless 
content. 

That  she  paid  her  price  for  all  this  in  in- 
creased knowledge  of  pain  I  hardly  need  say. 
From  the  time  she  began  to  roll  freely,  she 
had  collided  with  table  legs  and  the  like; 
and  from  then  until  she  could  walk,  bumps 
and  scratches  and  pinches  were  almost  daily 
experiences.  Her  early  creeping  was  so  awk- 
ward that  she  would  lose  her  footing,  so  to 
speak,  and  come  down  hard  on  her  face,  and 
her  later  and  quicker  creeping  brought  colli- 
sions ;  in  standing  by  chairs  she  would  lose 
hold  and  topple  over ;  and  in  investigating 
rockers,  window  blinds,  lids,  and  all  manner 
of  things,  she  did  not  fail  to  get  her  fingers 
hurt  now  and  then,  in  spite  of  all  vigilance. 


210        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

In  the  main,  she  was  surprisingly  indiffer- 
ent to  these  mishaps ;  even  when  the  blow 
had  reddened  the  skin,  she  would  look  sober 
only  a  minute,  then,  at  a  laugh  and  encour- 
aging word,  would  smile  and  go  on  with  her 
play.  This  was  doubtless  partly  tempera- 
ment :  babies  cry  with  nervous  fright  more 
than  with  the  actual  pain  of  a  bump,  and 
she  was  a  baby  of  tranquil  nerves.  But  her 
skin  sensitiveness  was  probably  still  low. 

With  experience  of  pain,  either  her  sensi- 
tiveness or  her  timidity  grew,  and  she  made 
more  fuss  than  she  did  at  first;  and  over 
some  especially  severe  hurts  she  screamed 
with  lusty  good-will.  Still,  it  was  noticeable 
on  the  whole  how  little  she  was  troubled 
in  learning  to  balance  and  move  about  by 
the  pains  that  strewed  the  way ;  and  this, 
I  think,  must  be  the  normal  condition  with 
healthy  children. 

I  have  spoken  just  now  of  the  pride  and 
joy  that  were  shown  over  kneeling  and  stand- 
ing.    The  joy,  of  course,  was  an  old  story : 


OF    A    BABY  211 

we  have  seen  that  every  stage  of  advancing 
power  had  been  accompanied  by  lively  plea- 
sure. But  this  feeling  of  pride,  this  exidta- 
tion  in  herself  as  actor,  was  a  new  emotion, 
and  quite  characteristic  of  the  higher  type  of 
self-consciousness  the  baby  had  entered  on 
at  about  seven  months  old,  as  I  have  already 
related.  In  going  through  her  httle  hand 
movements,  too,  she  showed  much  conscious- 
ness and  pride,  looking  prettily  into  our 
faces  for  approval,  as  she  patted  or  waved 
her  hands. 

As  the  baby  now  approached  nine  months 
old,  there  was  an  indescribable  dawning  ap- 
pearance of  comprehension  about  her  —  an 
air  of  understanding  her  surroundings  and 
getting  into  touch  with  our  minds.  She 
watched  our  movements  not  merely  with 
curiosity,  but  with  an  apparent  attempt  to 
interpret  them,  sometimes  with  a  curious, 
puzzled  drawing  of  the  mouth  that  looked 
like  mental  effort.  Many  things  she  did 
interpret   perfectly  well :  for  instance,  if  I 


212        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

picked  a  rose  and  held  it  up,  smiling,  she 
knew  that  it  was  for  her,  and  broke  into 
jubilation  accordingly.  She  volunteered  to 
play  peekaboo  from  early  in  the  month,  hold- 
ing up  a  cloth,  basket  lid,  or  whatever  she 
had  at  hand,  before  her  face,  and  peeping 
out  with  smiles.  She  made  intelligent  little 
adaptations  in  her  own  actions,  such  as  pull- 
ing at  the  tablecloth  to  bring  to  her  a  paper 
that  lay  on  it. 

She  seemed,  by  the  latter  part  of  the 
month,  to  understand  vaguely  a  good  deal 
that  was  said  to  her,  when  it  was  accom- 
panied with  a  gesture.  If  I  said,  "  Kiss 
aunty,"  and  offered  my  cheek,  she  would 
press  her  lips  against  it.  She  would  look 
around  to  see  if  her  mother  shook  her  head 
with  "  No,  no  !  "  when  she  crept  up  to  pull 
at  the  books  on  a  low  shelf.  Her  little  list 
of  accomplishments,  waving  and  patting  her 
hands,  and  so  on,  she  would  go  through  at 
the  mere  word,  without  any  gesture. 

One  important  development  in  the  latter 


OF    A    BABY  213 

part  of  the  month  was  a  httle  imitative  cry, 
something  Hke  mewing,  associated  with  the 
cats  —  important  because  of  its  bearing  on 
the  beginninofs  of  langfuagfe.  It  has  long: 
been  a  dispute  whether  language  began  vdih. 
imitation  of  the  sounds  of  nature,  or  with 
spontaneous  ejaculations  —  "  the  bow-wow 
theory  and  the  pooh-pooh  theory,"  as  they 
were  scoffingly  nicknamed  early  in  the  course 
of  the  discussion.  Our  baby  may  seem  to 
have  given  the  weight  of  her  authority  to 
the  bow-wow  theory,  for  this  mewing  cry 
did  in  fact  slowly  develop  months  later  into 
a  name  for  "  cat,"  and  might  be  called  the 
first  remote  foreshadowing  of  a  spoken  word. 
But  on  the  whole,  with  her  and  vnth  other 
babies,  the  early  stages  of  speech  confirm  the 
best  recent  opinion  —  namely,  that  language 
is  a  complex  j)rodiict,  into  which  both  imita- 
tion and  ejacuLition  enter,  with  perhaps  still 
other  elements. 

About  a  week  before  the  baby  was  nine 
months  old,  some  one  looked  up  from  dinner 


214        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

and  saw  her  standing  by  a  lounge,  steadied 
only  by  one  hand  pressed  against  it,  while 
she  waved  the  other  in  exultant  joy.  Her 
father  sprang  and  caught  her  as  she  toppled, 
then  set  her  on  her  feet  within  the  circuit  of 
his  arms,  but  without  support,  for  a  few 
seconds.  Her  legs  shook,  but  she  stood 
without  fear,  in  high  delight. 

After  this,  her  standing  at  chairs  grew 
rapidly  freer  and  bolder,  and  the  support 
she  needed  was  daily  less.  At  nine  months 
old,  she  was  absorbed  in  the  desire  to  stand. 
She  would  hold  on  with  one  hand  and  lean 
down  to  pick  up  things  with  confidence  and 
freedom.  In  the  first  week  of  the  tenth 
month,  she  even  liked  to  pull  herself  up  to 
her  feet,  then  deliberately  let  go,  come  down 
sitting  with  a  thud,  and  look  up  laughing 
and  triumphant.  She  evidently  thought  the 
coming  down  quite  as  fine  an  exploit  as  the 
getting  up. 

By  this  time  she  crept  freely  and  rapidly, 
laughing  with  pleasure  as  she  did  so.     If  she 


OF    A    BABY  215 

was  laid  on  a  blanket  on  the  lawn,  she  no 
longer  tumbled  about  contentedly  within  its 
area,  but  struck  off  across  the  grass,  stopping 
to  investigate  carefully  any  plant  or  fallen 
leaf  she  came  across.  The  medley  of  positions 
and  movements  had  disappeared,  and  creep- 
ing and  standing,  as  the  fittest,  had  survived. 
Within  a  week  after  she  was  nine  months 
old,  the  baby  began  to  get  up  to  her  feet  by 
low  objects,  and  then,  instead  of  stooping 
over  them,  to  abandon  all  support,  straighten 
up,  and  stand  alone  for  several  seconds, 
greatly  pleased  with  herself.  Next  she  could 
stand  a  minute  at  a  time,  with  such  sKght  sup- 
port as  a  fold  of  a  gown  in  her  hand,  or  in  a 
corner,  steadied  only  by  her  shoulders  against 
the  wall.  She  no  longer  plumped  down  to 
the  floor,  but  lowered  lierseK  cleverly  —  once 
(in  the  second  week  of  the  month)  without 
any  support  at  all,  having  absent-mindedly 
let  go  of  the  chair.  In  a  few  days  more,  it 
was  not  uncommon  for  her  to  forget  to  hold 
on,  and  to  stand  a  few  seconds  alone  by  a 


216        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

chair ;  and  if  she  was  at  some  one's  knee, 
where  she  felt  more  confidence,  she  would 
let  go  on  purpose,  and  try  dehberately  to 
stand  alone. 

Now  began  a  period  of  dihgent  self-train- 
ing in  standing.  As  I  sat  on  the  grass  and 
the  baby  played  beside  me,  she  would  put 
her  hands  on  my  knee,  Hft  herself  to  her 
feet,  and  balance  on  them  as  long  as  she 
could  —  seven  seconds  at  the  most,  in  the 
second  week  of  the  month,  a  quarter  of  a 
minute  in  the  third,  if  her  attention  was 
called  away  from  her  own  balance  by  some 
interesting  sight.  She  would  totter,  stretch 
out  her  arms  to  recover  her  balance,  circle 
with  them  just  as  we  do  (the  movement  must 
be  highly  instinctive),  come  down  with  a  jolt 
and  a  peal  of  baby  laughter,  scramble  to  my 
knees,  and  up  again.  People  are  foolish  to 
go  to  the  matinee  for  amusement  if  they  have 
a  chance,  instead,  to  sit  flat  on  a  lawn  on  a 
summer  day,  and  assist  at  a  baby's  standing 
lessons. 


OF    A    BABY  217 

In  these  days  there  was  evident  again  an 
intangible  but  great  increase  in  the  little 
one's  mental  alertness,  her  eager  curiosity  in 
following  our  movements,  her  look  of  effort 
to  understand,  her  growing  clearness  in 
grouping  associations  and  interpreting  what 
she  saw. 

Her  handhng  of  things  had  long  devel- 
oped into  elaborate  investigation,  turning  an 
object  over  and  examining  every  side,  poking 
her  fingers  into  crevices,  opening  and  shut- 
ting hds,  turning  over  the  leaves  of  books ; 
and  now  she  was  no  longer  satisfied  with  in- 
vestigating such  objects  as  she  came  across 
by  chance  —  she  began  to  have  a  passion 
(which  increased  for  weeks  and  months,  and 
long  made  up  a  great  part  of  her  life)  to  go 
and  find  what  there  was  to  see.  She  crept 
to  the  window  and  stood  at  the  low  sill,  to 
look  out,  beating  the  pane  with  her  soft 
little  hands  and  laughing  in  an  ecstasy  of 
delight  if  the  dog  wandered  by.  She  crept 
into  the  hall  and  explored  it,  sitting  down 


218        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

in  each  corner  to  take  a  survey,  and  to  look 
up  the  walls  above  her.  Her  toys  were  neg- 
lected ;  she  was  impatient  of  being  held  in 
arms,  and  eager  only  to  get  to  the  floor  and 
use  her  new  powers.  She  crept  happily 
about  for  hours  from  chaii'  to  chair,  from 
person  to  person,  getting  to  her  feet  at  each, 
and  setting  herself  cleverly  down  again; 
smiling  and  crowing  at  each  success,  and 
coming  to  us  for  applause  and  caresses. 
She  did  not  want  to  leave  the  floor  for  her 
meals,  and  was  reconciled  to  them  only  if 
she  might  stand  at  her  mother's  side  and 
take  her  milk  or  porridge  in  small  doses,  in- 
terspersed with  play.  She  ran  away  from 
us  on  hands  and  knees,  laughing,  if  she 
thought  we  were  about  to  pick  her  up. 

Outdoors  her  happiness  was  even  greater 
than  in  the  month  before,  and  her  cries  of 
rapture  as  she  looked  up,  down,  and  around, 
and  reahzed  her  own  activity  in  the  midst  of 
all  the  waving  and  shining  and  blooming 
things,   were   remarkable  —  uttered,  as   it 


OF    A    BABY  219 

were,  from  the  very  deeps  of  her  Kttle  soul, 
■vN-ith  that  impassioned  straining  of  the  cen- 
tral muscles  by  which  a  baby  throws  such 
abandon  of  longing  or  ecstasy  into  his  voice. 
We  seem  to  have  lost  the  vivid  expressiveness 
of  primitive  cries  in  getting  the  precision  and 
convenience  of  articulate  words. 

The  sights  and  sounds  of  outdoors  now 
contributed  greatly  to  the  little  gu-l's  joy 
there.  She  had  for  some  weeks  noticed 
sounds  more  than  ever  before  —  the  tapping 
of  a  woodpecker,  for  instance,  or  the  stamp- 
ing of  a  horse  in  the  stable  —  and  now  she 
was  quick  to  look  and  listen  at  the  note  of 
a  bird.  She  watched  the  birds,  too,  for  the 
first  time,  as  they  flew  from  tree  to  tree  ;  and 
the  profuse  California  flowers  were  objects 
of  incessant  desire  and  pleasure. 

The  power  of  communication  was  consid- 
erably increased  in  this  month  by  the  acqui- 
sition of  one  exceedingly  useful  sign.  The 
way  in  which  it  was  developed  is  an  interest- 
ing example  of  the  evolution  of  such  signs. 


220         THE    BIOGEAPIIY 

First  the  baby  began  to  use  her  forefinger 
tip  for  specially  close  investigations ;  at  the 
same  time  she  had  a  habit  of  stretching  out 
her  hand  towards  any  object  that  interested 
her  —  by  association,  no  doubt,  with  touch- 
ing and  seizing  movements.  Combining 
these  two  habits,  she  began  to  hold  her  fore- 
finger separate  from  the  others  when  she  thus 
threw  out  her  hand  towards  an  interesting 
object ;  then,  in  the  second  week  of  the 
month,  she  directed  this  finger  alone  towards 
what  interested  her ;  and  by  the  third  week, 
the  gesture  of  pointing  was  fairly  in  use. 
She  pointed  to  the  woodshed  door,  with  her 
mewing  cry,  when  she  wished  to  see  the  kit- 
tens; to  the  garden  door,  with  pleading 
sounds,  when  she  wished  to  be  taken  thither  ; 
to  the  special  bush  from  which  she  wished 
a  rose.  She  pointed  in  answer,  instead  of 
merely  looking,  when  we  asked,  "  Where 
is  grandpa  ?  "     "  Where  is  Muzhik  ?  " 

These  questions   can    hardly  have   been 
understood,  as  questions;  but  it  was  more 


OF    A    BABY  221 

than  ever  clear  that  she  got  some  idea  from 
a  good  deal  that  we  said,  and  now  by  the 
words  alone,  without  the  help  of  gestures. 
Doubtless  she  knew  several  simple  words  — 
words  of  coming  and  going,  of  food,  of  the 
kittens  and  the  dog  and  the  horse. 

All  this  time  she  had  shown  no  great 
improvement  in  walking  movements  when 
held  from  above,  and  she  had  no  particular 
ambition  to  walk.  But  in  the  last  week 
of  the  month  she  began  to  edge  along  by 
the  side  of  a  chair,  holding  to  it  —  a  great 
advance. 

The  first  attempts  at  climbing,  too,  ap- 
peared before  she  was  quite  ten  months  old. 
In  the  third  week  of  the  tenth  month  the 
baby  had  let  herself  down  by  her  hands  quite 
cleverly  from  a  large  chair  in  which  she  had 
been  scrambling  about  —  a  feat  that  must 
have  been  quite  instinctive,  since  she  did  it 
well  and  easily  at  the  first  try.  The  last 
day  of  the  month,  as  she  hovered  at  the  foot 
of  the  stairs  (a  region  about  which  she  had 


222        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

mucli  unsatisfied  curiosity),  some  one  helped 
her  to  put  her  knee  on  the  lower  step. 
Thereupon  she  laid  hold  on  the  next  one, 
and  pulled  herself  up,  and  with  the  same 
help,  mounted  two  steps  more.  At  this  point 
her  aunty's  stereotyped  appeal,  "  Don't  help 
her !  let  her  alone,  and  let  me  see  what  she 
will  do  !  "  prevailed.  A  candle  was  set  on 
a  higher  step  as  a  lure,  and,  sure  enough, 
the  little  thing,  unaided,  set  her  knee  on  the 
higher  level,  laid  hold  with  her  hands,  and 
drew  herself  up.  It  is  significant  that  true 
climbing  movements  should  be  so  early  and 
so  easily  caught  at  a  single  partial  lesson ; 
and  I  shall  have  occasion  to  say  more  about 
it  before  the  story  of  the  baby's  first  year 
closes. 

In  the  very  last  days  of  the  tenth  month 
came  a  wonderful  spring  upward  in  the  little 
one's  intelligence  about  her  surroundings, 
and  in  her  power  of  communicating  with  us. 
It  involved  the  real  beginning  of  spoken 
words  —  for  the  cat  cry  of  the  month  before 


OF    A    BABY  223 

remained  by  itself,  leading  to  nothing  more, 
and  though  it  was  the  first  sound  that  ex- 
pressed an  idea,  it  was  not  from  it,  but  from 
this  later  root,  that  spoken  language  sprang 
and  grew. 

But  the  mental  and  language  progress  of 
these  few  days,  just  as  the  baby  came  to  ten 
months  old,  was  the  beginning  of  a  stage 
of  development  that  belonged  to  the  later 
months  —  a  beginning  too  important  to  be 
crowded  in  at  the  close  of  a  chapter  that  is 
mainly  concerned  with  movement  develop- 
ment. So  I  keep  the  account  of  it  for  the 
story  of  the  eleventh  month. 


224        THE    BIOGRAPHY 


XII 

KUDIMENTS    OF    SPEECH  ;    CLIMBING   AND 
PROGRESS   TOWARD  WALKING 

Talk  before  you  go, 
Your  tongue  will  be  your  overthrow, 

says  the  old  saw.  But  perhaps  our  baby  did 
not  earn  the  ill  omen,  it  was  such  a  faint 
foreshadowing  of  speech  that  she  was  guilty 
of.  Probably  she  would  not  have  been 
detected  in  it  at  all,  had  not  ten  months' 
practice  made  us  pretty  good  detectives. 
Indeed,  but  for  the  notebook,  by  which  I 
could  compare  from  day  to  day  the  wavering 
approach  to  some  meaning  in  her  use  of  this 
or  that  syllable,  I  should  not  have  dared  to 
be  sui-e  there  really  was  a  meaning.  It  is  in 
these  formless  beginnings  of  a  beginning 
that  we  get  our  best  clues  (as  in  all  evolu- 
tionary studies)  to  the  real  secrets  of  the  ori- 
gin of  language. 


OF    A    BABY  225 

The  little  girl,  as  she  came  to  ten  months 
old,  was  a  greater  chatterer  than  ever,  pour- 
ing out  strings  of  meaningless  syllables  in 
joy  or  sorrow,  with  marvelous  inflections  and 
changes  —  such  intelligent  remarks  as  "  Ne- 
ne-oom-bo,"  and  "  Ga-boo-ng,"  and  "  A-did- 
did-doo,"  and  certain  favored  syllables  over 
and  over,  such  as  "  Da-da-da." 

In  the  last  four  days  of  the  tenth  month 
we  began  to  suspect  a  faint  consistency  ia 
the  use  of  several  of  the  most  common 
sounds.  We  began  to  think  that  something 
like  "  Da  !  "  (varying  loosely  to  "  Ga  !  *'  or 
"  Dng  !  "  or  "  Did-da  !  "  or  "  Doo-doo  !  '*  but 
always  hovering  round  plain  "  Da !  ")  was 
suspiciously  often  ejaculated  when  the  little 
one  threw  out  her  hand  in  pointing,  or  ex- 
ulted in  getting  to  her  feet ;  that  "  Na-na- 
TiYi !  "  was  separating  itself  out  as  a  wail  of 
unwillingness  and  protest,  and  ^'  Ma-ma- 
mS !  "  as  a  whimper  of  discontent,  and  lone- 
liness, and  desire  of  attention  ;  while  —  near- 
est of  all  to  a  true  word  —  a  favorite  old 


22G        THE  BIOGRAPHY 

murmur  of  "  M-jrm  "  or  "  Nsf-Grno; "  recurred 
so  ofteu  "when  something  disappe<ared  from 
sio-ht  that  "we  could  not  but  wonder  if  we 

o 

had  not  here  an  echo  of  our  frequent  "  All 
gone  ! 

All  these  sounds  were  used  often  enough 
at  other  times,  and  other  sounds  were  used 
in  their  special  places;  yet  week  by  week 
the  notebook  showed  "  Da, !  "  growing  into 
the  regular  expression  of  discovering,  point- 
ing out,  admiring,  exulting;  "Na-na-na!" 
into  that  of  refusal  and  protest ;  and  "  Ma- 
ma-ma," which  soon  became  "  Mom-mom- 
mom,"  into  that  of  a  special  sort  of  wanting, 
which  slowly  gathered  itself  about  the  mother 
in  particular.  I  do  not  think  that  these  were 
echoes  of  our  words  "  There  !  "  and  "  No  !  " 
and  "  Mamma ; "  it  was  only  slowly,  and 
after  the  baby  was  a  year  old,  that  they  came 
into  unison  with  these  words  —  and  in  the 
case  of  "  Mamma,"  not  without  some  teach- 
ing. It  is  more  likely  that  we  have  here  a 
natural  cry  of  pointing  out,  a  natural  nega- 


OF    A    BABY  227 

tive,  a  natural  expression  of  baby  need  and 
dependence,  which  give  us  a  hint  of  the  ori- 
Sfin  of  our  own  words. 

The  fourth  sound,  however,  which  devel- 
oped through  many  variations  (such  as 
"M-ga,"  "Ga,"  or  "  Gng ")  to  a  clear 
"  Gong,"  "  A-gong,"  and  even  "  Gone,"  was 
plainly  an  echo.  It  was  used  as  loosely  as  it 
was  pronounced  :  the  baby  murmured  "  Ng- 
gng !  "  pensively  when  some  one  left  the 
room ;  when  she  dropped  something  ;  when 
she  looked  for  something  she  could  not  find ; 
when  she  had  swallowed  a  mouthful  of  food ; 
when  she  heard  a  door  close.  She  wounded 
her  father's  feelings  by  commenting  "  M-ga!" 
as  her  little  hands  wandered  about  the  un- 
occupied top  of  his  head.  She  remarked 
"  Gong !  "  when  she  slipped  back  in  trying 
to  climb  a  step ;  when  she  failed  to  loosen  a 
cord  she  wished  to  play  with  ;  when  she  saw 
a  portiere,  such  as  she  was  used  to  hide 
behind ;  when  she  was  refused  a  bottle  she 
had  begged  for.     It  meant  disappearance, 


228        THE    BIOGKAPIIY 

absence,  failure,  denial,  and  any  object  asso- 
ciated with  these. 

In  just  this  fashion,  Pieyer's  boy  used  his 
first  word  of  human  speech,  at  about  thi? 
asae.  "  Atta  !  "  the  little  fellow  would  mur 
mur  when  some  one  left  the  room,  or  wher 
the  light  went  out  —  using  a  favorite  olci 
babble  of  his  own,  just  as  our  baby  did,  to 
help  him  get  hold  of  a  grown-up  word, 
"  Adieu "  or  "  Ta-ta,"  which  carried  the 
meaning  he  was  after.  The  idea  of  disap- 
pearance —  of  the  thing  now  seen,  now  gone 
—  seems  to  take  strong  hold  on  babies  very 
early ;  I  have  known  several  other  cases. 

In  all  this  we  seem  to  see  quite  clearly  the 
first  steps  in  language  making.  The  baby 
begins  slowly  to  turn  some  of  his  commonest 
chattering  sounds  to  special  uses  —  not  to 
carry  thought  to  other  people,  but  as  mere 
exclamations  to  reheve  his  own  mind.  It 
was  just  twice  within  her  first  year  that  our 
baby  turned  to  me  when  some  one  left  the 
room,  looked  in  my  face,  and  said  "  Gong  I  " 


OF    A    BABY  229 

At  all  other  times  it  was  only  murmured  to 
herself.  And  most  of  the  exclamations  ex- 
press a  mood  rather  than  a  real  idea ;  they 
are  halfway  between  mere  cries  and  words 
proper.  Even  when  there  is  plainly  an  idea, 
as  in  *'  All  gone,"  it  is  a  big,  vague  blur 
of  an  idea,  slowly  taking  form  in  the  little 
mind,  as  the  blurs  of  hght  and  dark  slowly 
outlined  themselves  into  objects  before  the 
little  eyes  months  before. 

At  this  point  the  modern  baby  catches  the 
trick  of  helping  himself  to  our  words  ready 
made,  and  (though  many  glimpses  of  primi- 
tive speech  show  through  the  whole  process 
of  learning  to  talk)  he  thus  saves  himself  in 
the  main  the  long  task  of  developing  them, 
throujj'h  which  his  ancestors  toiled. 

In  fact,  the  next  word  our  baby  took  into 
use,  a  fortniglit  later,  was  lifted  bodily  from 
our  speech  :  a  reproving  "  Kha  !  "  by  which 
we  tried  to  disgust  her  with  the  state  of  her 
fingers  after  they  had  been  plunged  into 
apple  sauce  or  like  matters.     She  quite  un- 


230         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

derstood  what  it  referred  to,  though  she  did 
not  share  our  objection  to  messy  fingers,  and 
thereafter  surveyed  her  own  complacently  in 
such  plight,  and  commented,  "  Kha  !  "  And 
I  may  here  run  ahead  so  far  as  to  say  that 
this  was  the  full  list  of  her  spoken  words 
within  the  first  year,  except  that  in  the  next 
month  she  used  an  assenting  "E!"  which 
may  have  been  "  Yes  ;  "  and  in  the  last  days 
of  the  year  she  began  to  exclaim  first  "  By  !  " 
then  "  My  !  "  (corrupted  from  "  By-by  ")  in 
saying  farewell. 

During  this  fortnight  of  swift  language 
development  the  little  one's  progress  in 
movements  had  been  slight.  But  towards 
the  middle  of  the  eleventh  month  she  took  a 
fresh  start.  One  day  she  raised  herself  to 
her  feet  without  anything  to  hold  to ;  stood 
on  tiptoe  to  peer  over  the  seat  of  her  high 
chair ;  forgot  to  hold  to  me,  in  her  eagerness 
for  a  fruit  I  was  peeHng,  and  stood  alone  for 
a  minute  and  a  half  at  least,  while  I  peeled 
it  and  fed  it  into  her  mouth  j  clambered  into 


OF    A    BABY  231 

my  lap  (as  I  sat  beside  lier  on  the  floor),  set- 
ting one  little  foot  up  first,  laying  hold  of 
my  shoulder,  and  tugging  herself  up  with 
mighty  efforts. 

She  chanced,  too,  on  the  art  of  shoving  a 
chair  before  her  for  a  step  or  two ;  and  the 
next  day,  in  her  eagerness  to  reach  a  glass  of 
water  her  father  was  bringing,  she  took  one 
unconscious  forward  step,  which  ended  in 
prompt  collapse  on  the  lawn.  But  neither 
of  these  beginnings  was  followed  up  by  any 
real  advance  in  learning  to  walk.  During 
the  rest  of  the  month  she  edged  about  more 
freely,  and  in  the  last  week  pushed  chairs 
before  her  a  little  again ;  and  if  we  supported 
her  and  m-ged  her  forward,  she  would  walk 
clumsily,  much  as  a  puppy  will  if  you  lead 
him  by  tlie  fore  paws ;  but  she  seemed  to 
find  the  movement  scarcely  more  natural 
than  the  puppy  does,  and  always  wanted 
soon  to  drop  down  to  all-fours. 

But  climbing  was  a  different  matter. 
Here  the  baby  seemed  laid  hold  of  by  strong 


232        THE    BIOGKAPIIY 

desire  and  instinct.  The  day  after  she 
climbed  into  my  hip,  she  spent  a  long  time 
zealously  chmbing  up  a  doorstep  and  letting 
herself  down  backward  from  it.  The  day 
after  that,  she  tackled  the  stairs  and  climbed 
two  steps.  Later  in  the  day,  I  set  her  at  the 
bottom  of  the  stairs  and  moved  slowly  up 
before  her.  The  little  thing  followed  after 
(her  mother's  arms  close  behind,  of  course ; 
no  one  would  be  crazy  enough  to  start  a  baby 
upstairs  without  such  precaution),  tugging 
from  step  to  step,  grunting  with  exertion 
now  and  then,  and  exclaiming  with  satisfac- 
tion at  each  step  conquered ;  slipping  back 
once  or  twice,  but  undiscouraged  —  fifteen 
steps  to  the  landing,  where  she  pulled  to  her 
feet  by  the  stair-post,  hesitated,  made  a  mo- 
tion to  creep  down  head  first,  then  crept, 
laughing,  across  the  landing,  and  up  five 
steps  more,  and  shouted  with  triumph  to  find 
herself  on  the  upper  floor.  She  even  looked 
with  ambition  at  the  garret  stairs,  and  started 
towards  them;  but   an  open  door  tempted 


OF    A    BABY  233 

her  aside  to  explore  a  room,  and  she  forgot 
the  stairs. 

For  the  rest  of  the  month  the  baby 
dropped  to  hands  and  knees  and  scrabbled 
joyously  for  the  stairs  at  every  chance  of 
open  door ;  she  was  not  satisfied  without 
going  up  several  times  daily ;  and  having 
people  who  beheved  in  letting  her  do  things, 
and  insuring  her  safety  by  vigilance  while 
she  did  them,  instead  of  by  holding  her  back, 
she  soon  became  expert  and  secure  in  mount- 
ing. She  made  assaults,  too,  on  everything 
that  towered  up  and  looked  in  the  least 
climbable  —  boxes,  chairs,  and  aU  sorts  of 
things,  quite  beyond  her  present  powers. 
She  seemed  possessed  by  a  sort  of  bhnd  com- 
pulsion towards  the  upward  movement. 

What  are  we  to  make  of  this  strong  climb- 
ing impulse,  this  untaught  skill  in  putting  up 
the  foot  or  knee  and  pulling  the  body  up, 
while  walking  is  still  unnatural  ?  I  sought 
out  every  record  I  could  find,  and  the  indi- 
cations are  that  our  baby  was  not  an  excep- 


234         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

tion  ;  that  as  a  rule  climbing  does  come  be« 
fore  walking,  if  a  baby  is  left  free  to  develop 
naturally.  Of  course  in  many  cases  walking 
is  artificially  hastened  and  cHmbing  pre- 
vented. 

Can  we  help  suspecting  a  period,  some- 
where in  the  remote  ages,  when  the  baby's 
ancestry  dwelt  amid  the  treetops,  and  learned 
to  stand  by  balancing  on  one  branch  while 
they  held  by  a  higher  one  ?  when  they  edged 
along  the  branch,  holding  on  above,  but 
dropped  to  all-fours  and  crept  when  they 
came  to  the  ground  now  and  then  to  get 
from  tree  to  tree?  The  whole  history  of 
the  baby's  movements  points  to  this:  the 
strong  arms  and  cHnging  hands,  from  birth ; 
the  intense  impulse  to  pull  uj),  even  from  the 
beginning  of  sitting ;  the  way  in  which  stand- 
ing always  begins,  by  laying  hold  above  and 
pulling  up ;  the  slow  and  doubtful  develop- 
ment of  creeping,  as  if  the  ancestral  creature 
had  been  almost  purely  a  tree-dweller,  with 
no  period  of  free  running  on  all-fours. 


OF  A    BABY  235 

Tree-dwelling  creatures,  living  on  the 
dainties  of  the  forest,  fruit  and  nuts  and 
eo-o-s  and  birds,  are  better  nourished  than 
the  ground-roaming  tribes ;  but  that  is  not 
half  the  story.  The  tree  mothers  cannot 
tuck  their  babies  away  in  a  lair  and  leave 
them ;  the  tree  babies  cannot  begin  early  to 
scramble  about,  like  little  cubs  —  their  dwell- 
ing is  too  unsafe.  There  is  nothing  for  it 
but  the  mother's  arms  ;  the  baby  must  be 
held,  and  carried,  and  protected  longer  than 
the  earth  babies.  That  was  the  handicap 
of  the  tree  life,  our  ancestors  might  have 
thought  —  the  helpless  babies.  But,  as  we 
have  seen  in  an  earher  chapter,  it  was  that 
long,  helpless  babyhood  that  gave  the  brain 
its  chance  to  grow  and  made  us  human. 

At  eleven  months  old  our  little  girl  could 
stand  alone  as  long  as  she  cared  to,  though 
perhaps  it  was  not  till  the  next  mouth  that 
she  felt  altogether  secure  on  her  feet.  She 
could  climb  up  and  down  stairs  with  perfect 
ease.     She  coidd  walk  held  by  one  liand,  but 


236        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

she  did  not  care  to,  and  creeping  was  still 
her  main  means  of  getting  anywhere. 

Her  understanding  of  speech  had  grown 
wonderfully,  and  as  she  was  docile  in  obey- 
ing directions,  I  could  always  find  out 
whether  she  knew  a  thing  by  name  by  say- 
ing, "  Point  to  the  rose,"  or  "  Bring  the 
book  to  aunty,"  and  thus  found  it  possible 
to  make  out  a  trustworthy  Hst  of  the  words 
she  knew :  fifty-one  names  of  people  and 
things ;  twenty-eight  action  words,  which  she 
proved  she  understood  by  obeying  ("  give  " 
and  "sit  down,"  and  the  hke),  and  a  few 
adverbial  expressions,  Hke  "  where  "  and  "  all 
gone  "  —  eighty-four  words  in  all,  securely 
associated  with  ideas.  She  understood  them 
in  simple  combinations,  too,  such  as,  "  Bring 
mamma  Ruth's  shoes ; "  and  often,  where 
she  did  not  know  all  the  words  in  a  sentence, 
she  could  guess  quite  shrewdly  from  those  she 
difl,  interpreting  our  movements  vigilantly. 

For  her  own  speech,  the  small  set  of 
spoken  words  she  owned  was  of  Httle  use ; 


OF    A    BABY  237 

indeed,  as  I  have  said,  these  were  only 
exclamations.  For  talking  to  us  she  used 
a  -wonderfully  vivid  and  dehcate  language 
of  grunts,  and  cries,  and  movements.  She 
would  point  to  her  father's  hat,  and  beg  till 
it  was  given  her ;  then  creep  to  him  and 
offer  the  hat,  looking  up  urgently  into  his 
face,  or  perhaps  would  get  to  her  feet  at  his 
side  and  try  to  put  it  on  his  head ;  when  he 
put  it  on,  up  would  go  her  httle  arms  with 
pleading  cries  till  he  took  her,  and  then  she 
would  point  to  the  door  and  coax  to  be  car- 
ried outdoors.  She  would  offer  a  handker- 
chief with  asking  sounds  when  she  wished  to 
play  peekaboo ;  or  a  whistle,  to  be  blown ; 
or  a  top,  to  be  spun.  When  she  was  car- 
ried about  the  garden  or  taken  driving,  or 
when  she  crept  exploring  and  investigating 
about  the  rooms,  she  woidd  keep  up  a 
most  dramatic  running  comment  of  interest, 
joy,  inquiry,  amusement,  desire ;  and  it  was 
remarkable  what  shades  of  approval  and 
disapproval,  assent,  denial,  and  request  she 
could  make  perfectly  clear. 


238        THE    BIOGKAPHY 


xm 

WALKING   alone;     DEVELOPING    INTELLI- 
GENCE 

And  now  our  little  girl  was  entered  on  the 
last  month  of  the  year  —  a  month  of  the 
most  absorbing  activity,  yet  perhaps  rather 
in  practicing  the  powers  she  already  had  than 
in  developing  new  ones.  She  added  to  the 
list  of  words  she  understood  till  it  was  impos- 
sible to  make  record  of  them  all  —  new  ones 
cropped  up  at  every  turn.  She  made  the 
two  small  additions  to  her  spoken  words  that 
I  have  already  mentioned.  She  became  per- 
fectly secure  in  standing,  and  she  was  even 
more  zealous  to  climb  than  before,  making 
nothing,  in  the  latter  part  of  the  month,  of 
turning  at  the  top  of  the  stairs  and  sliding 
down,  head  first  or  feet  first,  rarely  needing 
for  safety  the  vigilant  arms  that  always  hov- 
ered ready  to  catch  her. 


OF    A    BABY  239 

For  a  time  she  made  little  advance  towards 
walking,  though  she  began  now  to  show  some 
pleasure  and  pride  in  being  led  about  by  the 
hand.  But  about  the  middle  of  the  month 
the  walking  instinct  seemed  at  last  to  stir. 
The  httle  one  had  often  stepped  from  chair 
to  chair,  keeping  a  hand  on  one  till  she  had 
fairly  hold  of  the  other.  If  the  gap  was 
an  inch  wider  than  she  could  cross  thus,  she 
dropped  down  and  crept.  Now  one  day  she 
looked  at  the  tiny  gap,  let  go  her  chair,  stood 
longingly,  made  a  movement  as  if  to  take  the 
single  step,  and  dropped  ignomiuiously  and 
crept ;  nor  would  she  trust  herself  of  her  own 
accord  to  movement  on  her  feet  (though  once 
her  mother  did  coax  her  a  few  steps)  for 
nearly  a  week.     Then  at  last  she  ventured  it. 

I  did  not  see  the  first  exploit,  but  the  next 
day  I  set  her  against  the  wall  and  told  her  to 
walk,  and  she  would  step  forward  with  much 
sense  of  insecurity,  tottering  and  taking  tiny 
inches  of  steps,  her  legs  spreading  more 
widely  at  each  one,  till  I  caught  her  in  my 


240        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

arms.  Once  I  let  her  go  as  far  as  she  could. 
She  would  not  give  up  and  sit  down,  but 
went  on  as  far  as  her  legs  would  carry  her, 
tremulous,  pleased,  half  afraid,  half  proud, 
and  wholly  conscious  of  doing  something 
remarkable ;  and  when  at  the  seventh  step 
she  subsided  to  the  floor,  she  was  not  in  the 
least  frightened,  but  got  up  readily  and  tot- 
tered on  another  six  steps. 

The  next  day  she  had  weakened,  however, 
and  for  several  days  she  would  not  try  again  ; 
and  when  she  did  try,  she  fell  down  after  a 
single  step.  She  wanted  to  try  again,  and 
crept  back  to  the  wall,  stood  up,  laughed, 
waved  her  arms,  made  a  false  start,  and  could 
not  quite  find  the  courage.  In  the  four 
days  that  remained  of  her  first  year  she  some- 
times forgot  herself  and  took  a  step  or  two ; 
and  she  was  perfectly  able  to  take  half  a 
dozen  any  time,  strong  and  steady  on  her 
feet;  but  it  was  not  till  shortly  after  the 
close  of  the  year  that  she  cast  aside  her  fears 
and  suddenly  was  toddhng  everywhere. 


OF    A    BABY  241 

It  was  about  the  middle  o£  the  twelfth 
month  that  the  little  one  added  the  useful 
sifirn  of  nodding:  to  her  means  of  communi- 
eating.  She  had  been  taught  to  nod  as 
a  mere  trick  the  month  before,  and  took  to 
it  at  once,  jerking  her  whole  little  body  at 
every  nod  and  priding  herself  mightily  on  it. 
Perhaps  because  of  this  pride  and  pleasure, 
it  became  after  a  time  a  sort  of  expression  of 
approval :  she  greeted  us  with  nodding  in 
sign  of  pleasure  when  we  came  in ;  she  nod- 
ded like  a  mandarin  when  she  heard  she  was 
to  go  to  ride.  So  now,  Avhen  a  pleasant  sug- 
gestion was  made,  "  Would  Ruth  like  a 
cracker  ?  "  "  Does  Ruth  want  to  go  see  the 
kitties?"  her  nod  of  approval  soon  passed 
into  the  meaning  of  assent ;  indeed,  it  began 
now  to  be  joined  with  the  grunt  of  "  E ! " 
that  I  have  mentioned.  She  had  a  perfectly 
intelligible  negative  grunt,  too,  just  such  as 
grumpy  grown  peoi)le  use,  out  of  the  primi- 
tive stock  of  their  remotest  ancestry,  no 
doubt. 


242         THE    BIOGRAPHY 

I  was  nearly  taken  in  at  one  time  by  this 
cheerful  nodding  and  "  E  !  "  The  little  lady 
used  them  so  intelligently  when  she  was 
offered  something  she  wanted,  and  refused 
so  consistently  when  offered  what  she  knew 
she  did  not  want,  that  I  began  to  set  down 
any  question  as  understood  if  she  said  yes  to 
it.  But  presently  I  had  an  inkling  that 
when  she  did  not  know  whether  she  wanted 
it  or  not,  she  said  yes,  on  the  chance  —  since 
most  things  prefaced  by  "  Does  Ruth  want  ?  " 
proved  pleasant.  So  I  asked  her  alluringly, 
"  Does  Ruth  want  a  course  in  higher  mathe- 
matics ?  " 

The  rosy  baby  looked  at  me  gravely, 
waited  with  a  considering  air,  as  she  always 
did,  taking  it  in,  nodded  gravely,  and  said 
decisively,  "  E  !  " 

"  Does  Ruth  want  to  go  and  be  a  mission- 
ary in  Raratonga  ?  " 

"  E  !  "  with  no  less  decision. 

I  saved  her  confidence  in  my  good  faith 
by  substituting  something  else  as  good,  and 


OF    A    BABY  243 

more  immediately  practicable,  for  the  myste- 
rious attractions  I  had  offered,  and  used  due 
caution  thereafter  in  recording  her  answers. 

It  was  e^4dent  that  in  a  primitive  way  the 
little  one  was  comparing  and  inferring  not 
a  little  by  this  time.  A  week  before,  her 
grandmother  had  told  her  which  was  0  on 
a  set  of  letter  cards  she  played  with,  and 
presently  she  showed  Q  with  an  inquiring 
cry  :  "  What  is  this  that  looks  so  much  like 
0,  and  yet  is  not  0  ?  "  It  may  be  added 
that  she  always  knew  0  afterwards,  and 
picked  up  most  of  the  other  letters  as  easily 
—  an  evidence  of  the  unnecessarily  hard 
work  we  make  of  learning  the  letters  by 
postponing  them  till  the  normal  age  of  pick- 
ing up  the  name  of  anything  and  every- 
thing is  past. 

She  was,  of  course,  sometimes  quaintly 
misled  in  an  inference  by  lack  of  knowledge. 
In  the  last  week  of  the  month  I  shut  my 
eyes  and  asked  her,  "  Where  are  aunty's 
eyes  ?  "    The  baby  tried  in  vain  to  find  them 


244        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

behind  the  lids,  and  then  leaned  over  from 
my  lap  and  looked  carefully  for  the  lost  eyes 
on  the  floor  ! 

I  hardly  think  that  memory  is  much  devel- 
oped at  this  age  ;  the  probability  is  that  even 
the  two  year  old  remembers  things  only  in 
glimpses  —  one  here  and  one  there,  but  no- 
thing continuous :  this  is  one  of  the  great 
differences  between  his  mind  and  ours.  But 
our  little  girl  plainly  remembered  some  things 
for  days.  In  the  second  week  of  the  month 
her  uncle  showed  her  how  he  lifted  the  win- 
dow sash,  and  four  days  after,  catching  sight 
of  the  finger  handle,  she  tugged  at  it  with  im- 
patient cries,  trying  to  make  the  sash  go  up. 
A  few  days  later,  having  a  flower  in  her  hand 
when  her  feet  were  bare,  she  began,  with  a 
sudden  memory,  to  beg  to  have  something 
done  to  her  toes  with  it,  and  it  proved  that 
two  or  three  weeks  before  her  mother  had 
stuck  a  flower  between  the  fat  toes. 

All  this  month,  even  more  than  in  the 
eleventh,  she  was   incessantly  busy  in   ex- 


OF    A    BABY  245 

ploring  and  learning.  She  opened  boxes, 
took  things  out,  and  put  them  back ;  worked 
with  infinite  dihgence  and  seriousness  at  such 
matters  as  getting  a  rubber  ring  off  a  note- 
book I  had  stretched  it  round  ;  investigated 
crannies,  spaces  under  grates,  doors  ajar,  with 
an  undying  curiosity. 

She  began  to  imitate  our  actions  more : 
she  tried  to  comb  her  hair,  to  put  flowers 
into  a  vase,  to  mark  on  a  paper  with  a  pen- 
cil ;  she  pulled  at  her  toes  and  muttered,  as 
if  she  were  saying  the  piggy  rhyme. 

She  had  a  distinct  idea  as  to  what  con- 
stituted herself,  and  when  she  was  asked, 
"  Where  is  Ruth  ?  "  she  did  not  indicate  her 
whole  body,  but  always  seized  her  head  in 
her  hands  with  certainty  and  decision. 

She  took  delight  in  the  new  uses  of  mind 
and  memory,  no  less  than  in  her  bodily 
powers ;  she  would  recall  the  association  of 
an  object  and  its  name  with  joyous  laughter, 
and  her  "  DH  !  "  when  she  was  asked  to  point 
to  something  was  a  cry  of  pleasure. 


246        THE    BIOGRAPHY 

She  had  not  an  atom  of  moral  sense,  nor 
the  least  capacity  of  penitence  or  pity,  but 
she  was  a  friendly  little  thing,  with  no  worse 
tempers  than  a  resentful  whimpering  when 
she  was  put  into  her  clothes  —  incumbrances 
that  she  much  disliked.  She  was  assiduous 
in  putting  her  crackers  into  her  friends' 
mouths,  whether  for  fun  or  for  good-will ; 
and  it  was  not  uncommon  for  her  to  throw 
herself,  with  kisses  and  clinging  arms,  about 
our  necks  after  we  had  given  her  some  spe- 
cially valued  pleasure,  such  as  taking  her 
outdoors.  She  was  learning  to  coax  effec* 
tively  with  kisses,  too,  when  she  wished  very 
much  to  go. 

And  so  the  story  of  the  swift,  beautiful 
year  is  ended,  and  our  wee,  soft,  helpless 
baby  had  become  this  darling  thing,  begin- 
ning to  toddle,  beginning  to  talk,  full  of  a 
wide-awake  baby  intelligence,  and  rejoicing 
in  her  mind  and  body  ;  communicating  with 
us  in  a  vivid  and  sufficient  dialect,  and  over- 
flowing with  the  sweet  selfishness  of  baby 


OF    A    BABY  247 

coaxings  and  baby  gratitude.  And  at  a  year 
old,  there  is  no  shadow  on  the  charm  from 
the  perception  that  its  end  is  near.  By  the 
second  birthday  we  say,  "  Ah,  we  shall  be 
losing  our  baby  soon  !  "  But  on  the  first, 
we  are  eager,  as  the  httle  one  herself  is,  to 
push  on  to  new  unfoldings ;  it  is  the  high 
springtime  of  babyhood  —  perfect,  satisfy- 
ing, beautiful. 


UC  S"'J'HER-,  REGIj",;l  LiERAR>  FACILITY 


AA    000  782  726    4 


